


Moonlight (MxM Midnight Sun)

by silverman



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26229355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverman/pseuds/silverman
Summary: I could see how easy it would be to fall in love with Beau. It would be exactly like falling: effortless. Not letting myself love him was the opposite of falling - it was pulling myself up a cliff face, hand over hand, the task grueling as if I had no more than mortal strength.================================This is a rewrite of Midnight Sun, but with Beau replacing Bella as Edward's love interest. I will be keeping close to the original, but I will edit certain story points to make better sense with gay characters.I have created a mix of characters between Twilight and Life and Death, whichever felt right in the story. Also, very few characters are gay, and Edward/Beau attract both male and female characters in this story, although this is ultimately their love story.
Relationships: Archie Cullen/Jessamine Hale, Carlisle Cullen/Esme Cullen, Edward Cullen/Beau Swan, Emmett Cullen/Rosalie Hale
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	1. 1. First Sight

**1\. FIRST SIGHT**

THIS WAS THE TIME OF DAY WHEN I MOST WISHED I WERE ABLE TO SLEEP.

High school.

Or was _purgatory_ the right word? If there _were_ any way to atone for my sins, this ought to count toward the tally in some measure. The tedium was not something I grew used to; every day seemed more impossibly monotonous than the last.

Perhaps this could even be considered my form of sleep—if sleep was defined as the inert state between active periods.

I stared at the cracks running through the plaster in the far corner of the cafeteria, imagining patterns into them that were not there. It was one way to tune out the voices that babbled like the gush of a river inside my head.

Several hundred of these voices I ignored out of boredom.

When it came to the human mind, I’d heard it all before and then some. Today, all thoughts were consumed with the trivial drama of a new addition to the small student body. It took so little to work them up. I’d seen the new face repeated in thought after thought from every angle. Just an ordinary human boy. The excitement over his arrival was tiresomely predictable—it was the same reaction as one would get from flashing a shiny object at a group of toddlers. Half the superficial females were already imagining themselves infatuated with him, just because he was something new to look at. I tried harder to tune them out.

Only four voices did I block out of courtesy rather than distaste: my family, my two brothers and two sisters, who were so used to the lack of privacy in my presence that they rarely worried about it. I gave them what I could. I tried not to listen if I could help it.

Try as I may, still… I knew.

Rosalie was thinking, as usual, about herself—her mind was a stagnant pool with few surprises. She’d caught sight of her profile in the reflection off someone’s glasses, and she was mulling over her own perfection. No one else’s hair was closer to true gold, no one else’s shape was quite so perfectly an hourglass, no one else’s face was such a flawless, symmetrical oval. She didn’t compare herself to the humans here; that juxtaposition would have been laughable, absurd. She thought of others like us, none of them her equal.

Emmett’s usually carefree expression was crumpled with frustration. Even now, he ran one enormous hand through his ebony curls, twisting the hair into his fist. Still fuming over the wrestling match he’d lost to Jessamine during the night. It would take all his limited patience to make it to the end of the school day to orchestrate a rematch. Hearing Emmett’s thoughts never felt intrusive, because he never thought one thing that he would not say aloud or put into action. Perhaps I only felt guilty reading the others’ minds because I knew there were things inside that they wouldn’t want me to know. If Rosalie’s mind was a stagnant pool, then Emmett’s was a lake with no shadows, glass clear.

And Jessamine was… suffering. I suppressed a sigh.

 _Edward._ Archie called my name in his head and had my attention at once.

It was just the same as having my name called aloud. I was glad my given name had fallen out of style in the last few decades—it had been annoying in the past; anytime anyone thought of any Edward, my head would turn automatically.

My head didn’t turn now. Archie and I were good at these private conversations. It was rare that anyone caught us. I kept my eyes on the lines in the plaster.

 _How is she holding up?_ he asked me.

I frowned, just a small change in the set of my mouth. Nothing that would tip the others off. I could easily be frowning out of boredom.

Jessamine had been still for too long. She wasn’t performing human ticks the way we all must, constantly in motion so as not to stand out, like Emmett pulling at his hair, Rosalie crossing her legs first one way then the next, Archie tapping his toes against the linoleum, or me, moving my head to stare at different patterns in the wall. Jessamine looked paralyzed, her lean form ramrod straight, even her long, honey hair seeming not to react to the air wafting from the vents.

Archie’s mental tone was alarmed now, and I saw in his mind that he was watching Jessamine in his peripheral vision. _Is there any danger?_ He searched ahead into the immediate future, skimming through visions of monotony for the source behind my frown. Even as he did so, he remembered to tuck one fist under his sharp chin and blink regularly. He scratched his head, his buzzed hair not really reacting to the touch.

I turned my head slowly to the left, as if looking at the bricks of the wall, sighed, and then turned to the right, back to the cracks in the ceiling. The others would assume I was playing human. Only Archie knew I was shaking my head.

He relaxed. _Let me know if it gets too bad._

I moved only my eyes, up to the ceiling above, and back down.

_Thanks for doing this._

I was glad I couldn’t answer him aloud. What would I say? _My pleasure?_ It was hardly that. I didn’t enjoy tuning in to Jessamine’s struggles. Was it really necessary to experiment this way? Wouldn’t the safer path be to just admit that she might never be able to handle her thirst as well as the rest of us could, and not push her limits? Why flirt with disaster?

It had been two weeks since our last hunting trip. That was not an immensely difficult time span for the rest of us. A little uncomfortable occasionally—if a human walked too close, if the wind blew the wrong way. But humans rarely walked too close. Their instincts told them what their conscious minds would never understand: We were a danger that must be avoided.

Jessamine was very dangerous right now.

It did not happen often, but every now and then I would be struck by the obliviousness of the humans around us. We were all so accustomed to it, we always expected it, but occasionally it seemed more glaring than usual. None of them noticed us here, lounging at the battered cafeteria table, though an ambush of tigers sprawled in our places would be less lethal than we were. All they saw were five odd-looking people, close enough to human to pass. It was hard to imagine surviving with senses so incredibly dull.

At that moment, a short boy paused at the end of the closest table to ours, stopping to talk to a friend. He reached up to his hair, combing his fingers through it. The heaters blew his scent in our direction. I was used to the way that scent made me feel—the dry ache in my throat, the hollow yearn in my stomach, the automatic tightening of my muscles, the excess flow of venom in my mouth.

This was all quite normal, usually easy to ignore. It was harder just now, with the reactions stronger, doubled, as I monitored Jessamine.

Jessamine was letting her imagination get away from her. She was picturing it—picturing herself getting up from his seat next to Archie and going to stand beside the little boy. Thinking of approaching him, as if she were going to whisper in his ear, and letting her lips touch the arch of his throat. Imagining how the hot flow of his pulse beneath the weak barrier of his skin would feel under her mouth…

I kicked her chair.

She met my gaze, her black eyes resentful for a second, and then looked down. I could hear shame and rebellion war in her head.

“Sorry,” Jessamine muttered.

I shrugged.

“You weren’t going to do anything,” Archie murmured to her, soothing her mortification. “I could see that.”

I fought back the frown that would give his lie away. We had to stick together, Archie and I. It wasn’t easy, being the freaks among those who were already freaks. We protected each other’s secrets.

“It helps a little if you think of them as people,” Archie suggested, his musical voice racing too fast for human ears to understand, if any had been close enough to hear. “His name is Wesley. He has a baby sister he adores. His mother invited Esme to that garden party, do you remember?”

“I know who he is,” Jessamine said curtly. She turned away to stare out one of the small windows that were spaced just under the eaves around the long room. Her tone ended the conversation.

She would have to hunt tonight. It was ridiculous to take risks like this, trying to test her strength, to build her endurance. Jessamine should just accept her limitations and work within them.

Archie sighed silently and stood, taking his tray of food—his prop, as it were—with him and leaving her alone. He knew when she’d had enough of his encouragement. Though Rosalie and Emmett were more flagrant about their relationship, it was Archie and Jessamine who knew each other’s every need as well as their own. As if they could read minds, too—but only each other’s.

_Edward._

Reflex reaction. I turned to the sound of my name being called, though it wasn’t being called, just thought.

My eyes locked for half a second with a pair of large, sky-blue human eyes set in a pale, oval face. I knew the face, though I’d never seen it myself before this moment. It had been foremost in every human head today. The new student, Beaufort Swan. Son of the town’s chief of police, brought to live here by some new custody situation. Beau. He’d corrected everyone who’d used his full name.

I looked away, bored. It took me a second to realize that he had not been the one to think my name.

 _Of course he’s already crushing on the Cullens_ , I heard the first thought continue.

Now I recognized the “voice.”

Jeremy Stanley—it had been a while since he’d bothered me with his internal chatter.

 _Tough luck, both of the girls are taken_ , Jeremy went on. _He’s not even that impressive. Don’t know what all the fuzz is about with Erica… or McKayla._

He flinched mentally on the latter name. His obsession, the generically popular McKayla Newton, was completely oblivious to him. What a relief it had been when that girl had gotten over her misplaced fixation. It used to be nearly impossible to escape her constant, ridiculous daydreams. And Jeremy was equally annoyed at the fixation, although he had never guessed at her level of obsession.

Apparently, she was not as oblivious to the new boy. Another child reaching for the shiny object. This put a mean edge to Jeremy’s thoughts, though he was outwardly cordial to the newcomer as he explained to him the commonly held knowledge about my family. The new student must have asked about us.

 _Everyone’s looking at me today, too_ , Jeremy thought smugly. _Isn’t it lucky Beau has two classes with me? I’ll bet McKayla will want to ask me what he’s—_

I tried to block the inane chatter out of my head before the petty and the trivial could drive me mad.

“Jeremy Stanley is giving the new Swan boy all the dirty laundry on the Cullen clan,” I murmured to Emmett as a distraction.

He chuckled under his breath. _I hope he’s making it good_ , he thought.

“Rather unimaginative, actually. Just the barest hint of scandal. Not an ounce of horror. I’m a little disappointed.”

_What about the new boy? Is he disappointed in the gossip as well?_

I listened to hear what this new boy, Beau, thought of Jeremy’s story. What did he see when he looked at the strange, chalky-skinned family that was universally avoided?

It was my responsibility to know his reaction. I acted as a lookout, for lack of a better word, for my family. To protect us. If anyone ever grew suspicious, I could give us early warning and an easy retreat. It happened occasionally—some human with an active imagination would see in us the characters of a book or a movie. Usually they got it wrong, but it was better to move on somewhere new than to risk scrutiny. Rarely, extremely rarely, someone would guess right. We didn’t give them a chance to test their hypothesis. We simply disappeared, to become no more than a frightening memory.

That hadn’t happened for decades.

I heard nothing, though I listened close beside where Jeremy’s frivolous internal monologue continued. It was as if there were no one sitting beside him. How peculiar. Had the boy moved? That didn’t seem likely, as Jeremy was still talking with him. I looked up, feeling off-balance. Checking on my extra “hearing”—it wasn’t something I ever had to do.

Again, my gaze locked onto those wide blue eyes. He was sitting right where he had been before and looking at us—a natural thing to be doing, I supposed, as Jeremy was still regaling him with the local gossip about the Cullens.

Thinking about us, too, would be natural.

But I couldn’t hear a whisper.

A warm patch of red splotched on his neck as he looked, away from the embarrassing gaffe of getting caught staring at a stranger. It was good that Jessamine was still gazing out the window. I didn’t like to imagine what that easy pooling of blood would do to her control.

The emotions had been as clear on his face as if they were spelled out in words: surprise, as he unknowingly absorbed the signs of the subtle differences between his kind and mine; curiosity, as he listened to Jeremy’s tale; and something more… Fascination? It wouldn’t be the first time. We were beautiful to them, our intended prey. Then, finally, the embarrassment.

And yet, though his thoughts had been so clear in his odd eyes—odd because of the depth to them—I could hear only silence from the place he was sitting. Just… silence.

I felt a moment of unease.

This was nothing I’d ever encountered. Was there something wrong with me? I felt exactly the same as I always did. Worried, I listened harder.

All the voices I’d been blocking were suddenly shouting in my head.

 _… wonder what music he likes… maybe I could mention my new CD…,_ McKayla Newton was thinking, two tables away—focused on Beau Swan.

 _Look at her staring at him. Isn’t it enough that she has half the boys in school waiting for her to…_ Erica Yorkie’s thoughts were caustic, and also revolving around the boy.

 _… so disgusting. You’d think he was famous or something.… Even the_ Cullens _staring.…_ Logan Mallory was so jealous that his face, by all rights, should be dark jade in color. _And Jeremy, flaunting his new best friend. What a joke…_ Vitriol continued to spew from the boy’s thoughts.

 _… I bet everyone has asked him that. But I’d like to talk to him. What’s something more original?_ Ashley Dowling mused.

 _… maybe he’ll be in my Spanish…,_ June Richardson hoped.

 _… tons left to do tonight! Trig, and the English test. I hope my mom…_ Allen Weber, a quiet boy whose thoughts were unusually kind, was the only one at the table who wasn’t obsessed with this Beau.

I could hear them all, hear every insignificant thing they were thinking as it passed through their minds. But nothing at all from the new student with the deceptively communicative eyes.

And of course, I could hear what the boy said when he spoke to Jeremy. I didn’t have to read minds to be able to hear his low, clear voice on the far side of the long room.

“Which one is the boy with the reddish-brown hair?” I heard him ask, sneaking another look at me from the corner of her eye, only to glance quickly away when he saw that I was still staring.

If I’d had time to hope that hearing the sound of his voice would help me pinpoint the tone of his thoughts, I was instantly disappointed. Usually, people’s thoughts came to them in a similar pitch to their physical voices. But this quiet, shy voice was unfamiliar, not one of the hundreds of thoughts bouncing around the room, I was sure of that. Entirely new.

 _Measuring his competition, then? Already thinking of a plan to keep McKayla for yourself?_ Jeremy thought before answering the boy’s question. “That’s Edward. You’d think someone that looks like him would have all the girls he wanted, but he doesn’t date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him.” He snorted quietly.

I turned my head away to hide my smile. Jeremy and his classmates had no idea how lucky they were that none of them particularly appealed to me.

Beneath the transient humor, I felt a strange impulse, one I did not clearly understand. It had something to do with the vicious edge to Jeremy’s thoughts that the new boy was unaware of.… I felt the strangest urge to step in between them, to shield Beau Swan from the darker workings of Jeremy’s mind. What an odd thing to feel. Trying to ferret out the motivations behind the impulse, I examined the new boy one more time, through Jeremy’s eyes now. My staring had attracted too much attention.

Perhaps it was just some long-buried protective instinct—the strong for the weak. This boy was very pale, but he didn’t exactly look more fragile than his new classmates. He was probably as tall as me, a couple inches shorter, at around six feet. But still, I could see the rhythmic pulse of blood through his veins under the clear, pale membrane of his almost translucent skin.… But I should not concentrate on that. I was good at this life I’d chosen, but I was just as thirsty as Jessamine and there was no point in inviting temptation.

There was a faint crease between his eyebrows that he seemed unaware of.

It was unbelievably frustrating! I could easily see that it was a strain for him to sit there, to make conversation with strangers, to be the center of attention. I could sense his shyness from the way he held his broad shoulders, slightly hunched, as if he was expecting a rebuff at any moment. And yet I could only see, could only sense, could only imagine. There was nothing but silence from the very unexceptional human boy. I could hear nothing. Why?

“Shall we?” Rosalie murmured, interrupting my focus.

I turned my mind away from the boy with a sense of relief. I didn’t want to continue to fail at this—failure was a rare thing for me, and even more irritating than it was uncommon. I didn’t want to develop any interest in his hidden thoughts simply because they were hidden. No doubt when I did decipher them—and I _would_ find a way to do so—they would be just as petty and trivial as any human’s. Not worth the effort I would expend to reach them.

“So, is the new guy afraid of us yet?” Emmett asked, still waiting for my response to his earlier question.

I shrugged. He wasn’t interested enough to press for more information.

We got up from the table and walked out of the cafeteria.

Emmett, Rosalie, and Jessamine were pretending to be seniors; they left for their classes. I was playing a younger role than they. I headed off for my junior-level Biology lesson, preparing my mind for the tedium. It was doubtful Mr. Banner, a man of no more than average intellect, would manage to pull out anything in his lecture that would surprise someone holding two medical degrees.

In the classroom, I settled into my chair and let my books—props, again; they held nothing I didn’t already know—spill across the table. I was the only student who had a table to himself. The humans weren’t smart enough to _know_ that they feared me, but their innate survival instincts were enough to keep them away.

The room slowly filled as they trickled in from lunch. I leaned back in my chair and waited for the time to pass. Again, I wished I were able to sleep.

Because I’d been thinking about the new boy, when Allen Weber escorted him through the door, his name intruded on my attention.

_Beau seems just as shy as me. I’ll bet today is really hard for him. I wish I could say something… but it would probably just sound stupid._

_Yes!_ McKayla Newton thought, turning in her seat to watch the boys enter.

Still, from the place where Beau Swan stood, nothing. The empty space where his thoughts should be vexed and unnerved me.

What if it _all_ went away? What if this was just the first symptom of some kind of mental decline?

I’d often wished that I could escape the cacophony. That I could be normal—as far as that was possible for me. But now I felt panicked at the thought. Who would I be without what I could do? I’d never heard of such a thing. I would see if Carlisle had.

The boy walked down the aisle beside me, headed to the teacher’s desk. Poor guy; the seat next to me was the only one available. Automatically, I cleared what would be his side of the table, shoving my books into a pile. I doubted he would feel very comfortable there. He was in for a long semester—in this class, at least. Perhaps, though, sitting beside him, I’d be able to flush out his thoughts’ hiding place… not that I’d ever needed close proximity before. Not that I would find anything worth listening to.

Beau Swan walked into the flow of heated air that blew toward me from the vent.

His scent hit me like a battering ram, like an exploding grenade. There was no image violent enough to encompass the force of what happened to me in that moment.

Instantly, I was transformed. I was nothing close to the human I’d once been. No trace of the shreds of humanity I’d managed to cloak myself in over the years remained.

I was a predator. He was my prey. There was nothing else in the whole world but that truth.

There was no room full of witnesses—they were already collateral damage in my mind. The mystery of his thoughts was forgotten. His thoughts meant nothing, for he would not go on thinking them much longer.

I was a vampire, and he had the sweetest blood I’d smelled in more than eighty years.

I hadn’t imagined that such a scent could exist. If I’d known it did, I would have gone searching for it long ago. I would have scoured the planet for him. I could imagine the taste.…

Thirst burned through my throat like fire. My mouth felt baked and desiccated, and the fresh flow of venom did nothing to dispel that sensation. My stomach twisted with the hunger that was an echo of the thirst. My muscles coiled to spring.

Not a full second had passed. He was still taking the same step that had put him downwind from me.

As his foot touched the ground, his eyes slid toward me, a movement he clearly meant to be stealthy. His gaze met mine, and I saw myself reflected in the mirror of his eyes.

The shock of the face I saw there saved his life for a few thorny moments.

He didn’t make it easier. When he processed the expression on my face, blood flooded up by his necks and into his cheeks again, turning his skin the most delicious color I’d ever seen. The scent was a thick haze in my brain. I could barely think through it. My instincts raged, resisting control, incoherent.

He walked more quickly now, as if he understood the need to escape. His haste made him clumsy—he tripped and stumbled forward, almost falling into the girl seated in front of me. Vulnerable, weak. Even more than usual for a human.

I tried to focus on the face I’d seen in his eyes, a face I recognized with revulsion. The face of the monster inside me—the face I’d beaten back with decades of effort and uncompromising discipline. How easily it sprang to the surface now!

The scent swirled around me again, scattering my thoughts and nearly propelling me out of my seat.

No.

My hand gripped under the edge of the table as I tried to hold myself in my chair. The wood was not up to the task. My hand crushed through the strut and came away with a palmful of splintered pulp, leaving the shape of my fingers carved into the remaining wood.

Destroy evidence. That was a fundamental rule. I quickly pulverized the edges of the shape with my fingertips, leaving nothing but a ragged hole and a pile of shavings on the floor, which I scattered with my foot.

Destroy evidence. Collateral damage…

I knew what had to happen now. The boy would have to come sit beside me, and I would have to kill him.

The innocent bystanders in this classroom, eighteen other children and one man, could not be allowed to leave, having seen what they would soon see.

I flinched at the thought of what I must do. Even at my very worst, I had never committed this kind of atrocity. I had never killed innocents. And now I planned to slaughter twenty of them at once.

The face of the monster in my reflection mocked me.

Even as part of me shuddered away from him, another part was planning what would happen next.

If I killed the boy first, I would have only fifteen or twenty seconds with him before the humans in the room reacted. Maybe a little longer if at first they did not realize what I was doing. He would not have time to scream or feel pain; I would not kill him cruelly. That much I could give this stranger with his horribly desirable blood.

But then I would have to stop them from escaping. I wouldn’t have to worry about the windows, too high up and small to provide an escape for anyone. Just the door—block that and they were trapped.

It would be slower and more difficult, trying to take them all down when they were panicked and scrambling, moving in chaos. Not impossible, but there would be much more noise. Time for lots of screaming. Someone would hear… and I’d be forced to kill even more innocents in this black hour.

And his blood would cool while I murdered the others.

The scent punished me, closing my throat with dry aching.…

So the witnesses first, then.

I mapped it out in my head. I was in the middle of the room, the row farthest from the front. I would take my right side first. I could snap four or five of their necks per second, I estimated. It would not be noisy. The right side would be the lucky side; they would not see me coming. Moving around the front and back down the left side, it would take me, at most, five seconds to end every life in this room.

Long enough for Beau Swan to see, briefly, what was coming for him. Long enough for him to feel fear. Long enough, maybe, if shock didn’t freeze him in place, for him to work up a scream. One soft scream that would not bring anyone running.

I took a deep breath, and the scent was a fire that raced through my dry veins, burning out from my chest to consume every better impulse that I was capable of.

He was just turning now. In a few seconds, he would sit down inches away from me.

The monster in my head exulted.

Someone slammed shut a folder on my left. I didn’t look up to see which of the doomed humans it was, but the motion sent a wave of ordinary, unscented air wafting across my face.

For one short second, I was able to think clearly. In that precious instant, I saw two faces in my head, side by side.

One was mine, or rather had been: the red-eyed monster that had killed so many people that I’d stopped counting. Rationalized, justified murders. I had been a killer of killers, a killer of other, less powerful monsters. It was a god complex, I acknowledged that—deciding who deserved a death sentence. It was a compromise with myself. I had fed on human blood, but only by the loosest definition. My victims were, in their various dark pastimes, barely more human than I was.

The other face was Carlisle’s.

There was no resemblance between the two faces. They were bright day and blackest night.

There was no reason for a resemblance to exist. Carlisle was not my father in the basic biological sense. We shared no common features. The similarity in our coloring was a product of what we were; every vampire was corpse-pale. The similarity in the color of our eyes was another matter—a reflection of a mutual choice.

And yet, though there was no basis for a resemblance, I’d imagined that my face had begun to reflect his, to an extent, in the last seventy-odd years that I had embraced his choice and followed in his steps. My features had not changed, but it seemed to me as though some of his wisdom had marked my expression, a little of his compassion could be traced in the set of my mouth, and hints of his patience were evident on my brow.

All those tiny improvements were lost in the monster’s face. In a few moments, there would be nothing left in me that would reflect the years I’d spent with my creator, my mentor, my father in all the ways that counted. My eyes would glow red as a devil’s; all likeness would be lost forever.

In my head, Carlisle’s kind eyes did not judge me. I knew that he would forgive me for this horrible act. Because he loved me. Because he thought I was better than I was.

Beau Swan sat down in the chair next to me, his movements stiff and awkward—no doubt with fear—and the scent of his blood bloomed in an inescapable cloud around me.

I would prove my father wrong about me. The misery of this fact hurt almost as much as the fire in my throat.

I leaned away from him in revulsion—disgusted by the monster aching to take him.

Why did he have to come here? Why did he have to _exist_? Why did he have to ruin the little peace I had in this nonlife of mine? Why had this aggravating human ever been born? He would ruin me.

I turned my face away from him as a sudden fierce, irrational hatred washed through me.

I didn’t want to be the monster! I didn’t want to kill this roomful of harmless children! I didn’t want to lose everything I’d gained in a lifetime of sacrifice and denial!

I wouldn’t.

He couldn’t make me.

The scent was the problem, the hideously appealing scent of his blood. If there was only some way to resist… if only another gust of fresh air could clear my head.

Beau Swan took off his jacket, shaking it a bit before placing it on top of his chair, wafting the smell in my direction.

Was he insane?

No, there was no helpful breeze. But I didn’t _have_ to breathe.

I stopped the flow of air through my lungs. The relief was instantaneous, but incomplete. I still had the memory of the scent in my head, the taste of it on the back of my tongue. I wouldn’t be able to resist even that for long.

Every life in this room was in danger while he and I were in it together. I should run. I _wanted_ to run, to get away from the _heat_ of him next to me, and the punishing pain of the burning, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that if I unlocked my muscles to move, even just to stand, I wouldn’t lash out and commit the slaughter I’d already planned.

But perhaps I could resist for an hour. Would one hour be enough time to gain control to move without striking? I doubted, then forced myself to commit. I would _make_ it enough. Just enough time to get out of this room full of victims, victims that perhaps didn’t have to _be_ victims. If I could resist for one short hour.

It was an uncomfortable feeling, not breathing. My body did not need oxygen, but it went against my instincts. I relied on scent more than my other senses in times of stress. It led the way in the hunt; it was the first warning in case of danger. I did not often come across something as dangerous as I was, but self-preservation was just as strong in my kind as it was in the average human.

Uncomfortable, but manageable. More bearable than smelling _his_ and not sinking my teeth through that fine, thin, see-through skin to the hot, wet, pulsing—

An hour! Just one hour. I must not think of the scent, the taste.

Mr. Banner handed out last week’s quizzes, passing mine to Beau. The silent boy kept his distance, looking down the entire time he used to grab my quiz and hand it over. I couldn’t see his face to try to read the emotions in his clear, deep eyes. Was he trying to hide those eyes from me? Out of fear? Shyness? To keep his secrets?

My former irritation at being stymied by his soundless thoughts was weak and pale in comparison to the need—and the hate—that possessed me now. For I hated this frail boy beside me, hated him with all the fervor with which I clung to my former self, my love of my family, my dreams of being something better than what I was. Hating him, hating how he made me feel—it helped a little. Yes, the irritation I’d felt before was weak, but it, too, helped a little. I clung to any thought that distracted me from imagining what he would _taste_ like.…

Hate and irritation. Impatience. Would the hour never pass?

And when the hour ended… he would walk out of this room. And I would do what?

If I could control the monster, make him see that the delay would be worth it… I could introduce myself. _Hello, my name is Edward Cullen. Did you need any help getting to your next class?_

He would say yes. It would be the polite thing to do. Even already fearing me, as I was sure he did, he would follow convention and walk beside me. It should be easy enough to lead him in the wrong direction. A spur of the forest reached out like a finger to touch the back corner of the parking lot. I could tell him I’d forgotten a book in my car.…

Would anyone notice that I was the last person he’d been seen with? It was raining, as usual. Two dark raincoats heading in the wrong direction wouldn’t pique too much interest or give me away.

Except that I was not the only student who was aware of him today—though no one was as blisteringly aware as I. McKayla Newton, in particular, was conscious of every shift in his weight as he fidgeted in his chair—he was uncomfortable so close to me, just as anyone would be, just as I’d expected before his scent had destroyed all charitable concern. McKayla Newton would notice if he left the classroom with me.

If I could last an hour, could I last two?

I flinched at the pain of the burning.

He would go home to an empty house. Police Chief Swan worked an eight-hour day. I knew his house, as I knew every house in the tiny town. His home was nestled right up against thick woods, with no close neighbors. Even had he time to scream, which he would not, there would be no one to hear.

That would be the responsible way to deal with this. I’d gone more than seven decades without human blood. If I held my breath, I could last two hours. And when I had him alone, there would be no chance of anyone else getting hurt. _And no reason to rush through the experience_ , the monster in my head agreed.

It was sophistry to think that by saving the nineteen humans in this room with effort and patience, I would be less of a monster when I killed this innocent boy.

Though I hated him, I was absolutely aware that my hatred was unjust. I knew that what I really hated was myself. And I would hate us both so much more when he was dead.

I made it through the hour in this way—imagining the best ways to kill him. I tried to avoid imagining the actual _act_. That might be too much for me. So I planned strategy and nothing more.

Once, toward the very end, he peeked up at me. I could feel the unjustified hatred burning out of me as I met his gaze—see the reflection of it in his frightened eyes. Blood painted his cheek before he could look away again, and I was nearly undone.

But the bell rang. And we—how cliché—were saved. He, from death. I, for just a short time, from being the nightmarish creature I feared and loathed.

Now I had to move.

Even focusing all my attention on the simplest of actions, I couldn’t walk as slowly as I should; I darted from the room. If anyone had been looking, they might have suspected that there was something not right about my exit. No one was paying attention to me; all thoughts still swirled around the boy who was condemned to die in little more than an hour’s time.

I hid in my car.

I didn’t like to think of myself as having to hide. How cowardly that sounded. But I didn’t have enough discipline left to be around humans now. Focusing so much of my efforts on not killing _one_ of them left me no resources to resist the others. What a waste that would be. If I were to give in to the monster, I might as well make it worth the defeat.

I played a CD that usually calmed me, but it did little for me now. No, what helped most was the cool, wet air that drifted with the light rain through my open windows. Though I could remember the scent of Beau Swan’s blood with perfect clarity, inhaling this clean air was like washing out the inside of my body from its infection.

I was sane again. I could think again. And I could fight again. I could fight what I didn’t want to be.

I didn’t have to go to his home. I didn’t have to kill him. Obviously, I was a rational, thinking creature, and I had a choice. There was always a choice.

It hadn’t felt that way in the classroom… but I was away from him now.

I didn’t _have_ to disappoint my father. I didn’t have to cause my mother stress, worry… pain. Yes, it would hurt my adopted mother, too. And she was so gentle, so tender and loving. Causing someone like Esme pain was truly inexcusable.

Perhaps, if I avoided this boy very, very carefully, there was no need for my life to change. I had things ordered the way I liked them. Why should I let some aggravating and delicious nobody ruin that?

How ironic that I’d wanted to protect this human boy from the paltry, toothless threat of Jeremy Stanley’s snide thoughts. I was the last person who would ever stand as a protector for Beaufort Swan. He would never need protection from anything more than he needed it from me.

Where was Archie? I suddenly wondered. Hadn’t he seen me killing the Swan boy in a multitude of ways? Why hadn’t he come to my aid—to stop me or help me clean up the evidence, whichever? Was he so absorbed with watching for trouble with Jessamine that he’d missed this much more horrific possibility? Or was I stronger than I thought? Would I really not have done anything to the boy?

No. I knew that wasn’t true. Archie must be concentrating vary hard on Jessamine.

I searched in the direction I knew my brother would be, in the small building used for English classes. It did not take me long to locate his familiar “voice.” And I was right. His every thought was turned to Jessamine, watching her small choices with minute scrutiny.

I wished I could ask his advice, but at the same time, I was glad he didn’t know what I was capable of. I felt a new burn through my body—the burn of shame. I didn’t want any of them to know.

If I could avoid Beau Swan, if I could manage not to kill him—even as I thought that, the monster writhed and gnashed his teeth in frustration—then no one would have to know. If I could keep away from his scent…

There was no reason I shouldn’t try, at least. Make a good choice. Try to be what Carlisle thought I was.

The last hour of school was almost over. I decided to put my new plan into action at once. Better than sitting here in the parking lot, where he might pass me and ruin my attempt. Again, I felt the unjust hatred for the boy.

I walked swiftly—a little too swiftly, but there were no witnesses—across the tiny campus to the office.

It was empty except for the receptionist, who didn’t notice my silent entrance.

“Ms. Cope?”

The woman with the unnaturally red hair looked up and startled. It always caught them off guard, the little markers they didn’t understand, no matter how many times they’d seen one of us before.

“Oh,” she gasped, a little flustered. She smoothed her shirt. _Silly_ , she thought to herself. _He’s almost young enough to be my son._ “Hello, Edward. What can I do for you?” Her eyelashes fluttered behind her thick glasses.

Uncomfortable. But I knew how to be charming when I wanted to be. It was easy, since I was able to know instantly how any tone or gesture was taken.

I leaned forward, meeting her gaze as if I were staring deep into her flat brown eyes. Her thoughts were already in a flutter. This should be simple.

“I was wondering if you could help me with my schedule,” I said in the soft voice I reserved for not scaring humans.

I heard the tempo of her heart increase.

“Of course, Edward. How can I help?” _Too young, too young_ , she chanted to herself. Wrong, of course. I was older than her grandfather.

“I was wondering if I could move from my Biology class to a senior-level science. Physics, perhaps?”

“It there a problem with Mr. Banner, Edward?”

“Not at all, it’s just that I’ve already studied this material.…”

“In that accelerated school you all went to in Alaska. Right.” Her thin lips pursed as she considered this. _They should all be in college. I’ve heard the teachers complain. Perfect 4.0s, never a hesitation with a response, never a wrong answer on a test—like they’ve found some way to cheat in every subject. Mr. Varner would rather believe that anyone was cheating in Trig than think a student was smarter than him. I’ll bet their mother tutors them.… “_ Actually, Edward, Physics is pretty much full right now. Mr. Banner hates to have more than twenty-five students in a class—”

“I wouldn’t be any trouble.”

 _Of course not. Not a perfect Cullen._ “I know that, Edward. But there just aren’t enough seats as it is.…”

“Could I drop the class, then? I could use the period for independent study.”

“Drop Biology?” Her mouth fell open. _That’s crazy. How hard is it to sit through a subject you already know? There_ must _be a problem with Mr. Banner._ “You won’t have enough credits to graduate.”

“I’ll catch up next year.”

“Maybe you should talk to your parents about that.”

The door opened behind me, but whoever it was did not think of me, so I ignored the arrival and concentrated on Ms. Cope. I leaned slightly closer and stared as if I was gazing more deeply into her eyes. This would work better if they were gold today instead of black. The blackness frightened people, as it should.

My miscalculation affected the woman. She flinched back, confused by her conflicting instincts.

“Please, Ms. Cope?” I murmured, my voice as smooth and compelling as it could be, and her momentary aversion eased. “Isn’t there some other section I could switch to? I’m sure there has to be an open slot somewhere? Sixth-hour Biology can’t be the only option.…”

I smiled at her, careful not to flash my teeth so widely that it would scare her again, letting the expression soften my face.

Her heart drummed faster. _Too young_ , she reminded herself frantically. “Well, maybe I could talk to Bob—I mean Mr. Banner. I could see if—”

A second was all it took to change everything: the atmosphere in the room, my mission here, the reason I leaned toward the red-haired woman.… What had been for one purpose was now for another.

A second was all it took for Sam Wells to enter the room, place a signed tardy slip in the basket by the door, and hurry out again, in a rush to be away from school. A sudden gust of wind through the open door crashed into me, and I realized why that first person through the door had not interrupted me with his thoughts.

I turned, though I did not need to make sure.

Beau Swan stood with his back pressed to the wall beside the door, a piece of paper clutched in his hands. His eyes were even larger than before as he took in my ferocious, inhuman glare.

The smell of his blood saturated every particle of air in the tiny, hot room. My throat burst into flames.

The monster glared back at me from the mirror of his eyes again, a mask of evil.

My hand hesitated in the air above the counter. I would not have to look back in order to reach across it and slam Ms. Cope’s head into her desk with enough force to kill her. Two lives rather than twenty. A trade.

The monster waited anxiously, hungrily, for me to do it.

But there was always a choice—there _had_ to be.

I cut off the motion of my lungs and fixed Carlisle’s face in front of my eyes. I turned back to face Ms. Cope and heard her internal surprise at the change in my expression. She shrank away from me, but her fear did not form into coherent words.

Using all the control I’d mastered in my decades of self-denial, I made my voice even and smooth. There was just enough air left in my lungs to speak once more, rushing through the words.

“Never mind, then. I can see that it’s impossible. Thank you so much for your help.”

I spun and launched myself from the room, trying not to feel the warm-blooded heat of the boy’s body as I passed within inches of it.

I didn’t stop until I was in my car, moving too fast the entire way there. Most of the humans had cleared out already, so there weren’t a lot of witnesses. I heard a sophomore, D. J. Garrett, notice and then disregard.…

_Where did Cullen come from? It was like he just came out of thin air.… There I go, with the imagination again. Mom always says…_

When I slid into my Volvo, the others were already there. I tried to control my breathing, but I was gasping at the fresh air as if I’d been suffocated.

“Edward?” Archie asked, alarm in his voice.

I just shook my head at him.

“What the hell happened to you?” Emmett demanded, distracted for the moment from the fact that Jessamine was not in the mood for his rematch.

Instead of answering, I threw the car into reverse. I had to get out of this lot before Beau Swan could follow me here, too. My own personal demon, tormenting me… I swung the car around and accelerated. I hit forty before I was out of the parking lot. On the road, I hit seventy before I made the corner.

Without looking, I knew that Emmett, Rosalie, and Jessamine had all turned to stare at Archie. He shrugged. He couldn’t see what had passed, only what was coming.

He looked ahead for me now. We both processed what he saw in his head, and we were both surprised.

“You’re leaving?” he whispered.

The others stared at me now.

“Am I?” I snarled through my teeth.

He saw it then, as my resolve wavered and another choice spun my future in a darker direction.

“Oh.”

Beau Swan, dead. My eyes, glowing crimson with fresh blood. The search that would follow. The careful time we would wait before it was safe for us to pull out of Forks and start again…

“Oh,” he said again. The picture grew more specific. I saw the inside of Chief Swan’s house for the first time, saw Beau in a small kitchen with yellow cupboards, his back to me as I stalked him from the shadows, let the scent pull me toward him.…

“Stop!” I groaned, not able to bear more.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

The monster rejoiced.

And the vision in his head shifted again. An empty highway at night, the trees beside it coated in snow, flashing by at almost two hundred miles per hour.

“I’ll miss you,” he said. “No matter how short a time you’re gone.”

Emmett and Rosalie exchanged an apprehensive glance.

We were almost to the turnoff onto the long drive that led to our home.

“Drop us here,” Archie instructed. “You should tell Carlisle yourself.”

I nodded, and the car squealed to a sudden stop.

Emmett, Rosalie, and Jessamine got out in silence; they would make Archie explain when I was gone. Archie touched my shoulder.

“You will do the right thing,” he murmured. Not a vision this time—an order. “He’s Charlie Swan’s only family. It would kill him, too.”

“Yes,” I said, agreeing only with the last part.

He slid out to join the others, his eyebrows pulling together in anxiety. They melted into the woods, out of sight before I could turn the car around.

I knew the visions in Archie’s head would be flashing from dark to bright like a strobe light as I sped back to Forks doing ninety. I wasn’t sure where I was going. To say goodbye to my father? Or to embrace the monster inside me? The road flew away beneath my tires.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I finished reading Midnight Sun, and as I was reading it, I decided I wanted to rewrite it but with Life and Death characters. But as I was thinking about it, I realized I didn't know how to write from Edythe's perspective as a guy. And also I really like Edward.
> 
> So I decided to mix them up, and this project was born with Edward/Beau as leads.
> 
> I'm keeping most of Meyer's writing, but I'm changing a few things to fit in with gay leads.  
> Even though it might feel weird to some, I've decided I'm not making everyone gay. From my experience, there's only ever a handful of gay guys in a high school, and in one as small as Forks, having half of the guys being gay made no sense in my mind.  
> So I'm keeping the girls from L&D, setting them up as Edward's rivals.
> 
> I decided to keep Rosalie and Emmett, mostly because of Emmett. I just couldn't see Royal letting Eleanor hang out with Edward alone so much.  
> Similarly, I can't see a world where Carine and Edward would develop a mother/son bond so close in age. It makes more sense to keep Carlisle as the inspiring father figure.  
> But I didn't want to keep the entire original Cullen family. I love Alice as a character, but I really like the idea of developing the Edward/Archie bromance. Jasper/Jessamine aren't as vital to this story, so I think this change works for the story.


	2. 2. Open Book

**2\. OPEN BOOK**

I LEANED BACK AGAINST THE SOFT SNOWBANK, LETTING THE DRY POWDER reshape itself around my weight. My skin had cooled to match the air around me, and the tiny pieces of ice felt like velvet under my skin.

The sky above me was clear, brilliant with stars, glowing blue in some places, yellow in others. The stars created majestic, swirling shapes against the black backdrop of the empty universe—an awesome sight. Exquisitely beautiful. Or rather, it should have been exquisite. Would have been, if I’d been able to really see it.

It wasn’t getting any better. Six days had passed, six days I’d hidden here in the empty Denali wilderness, but I was no closer to freedom than I had been since the first moment I’d caught his scent.

When I stared up at the jeweled sky, it was as if there were an obstruction between my eyes and its beauty. The obstruction was a face, just an unremarkable human face, but I couldn’t quite seem to banish it from my mind.

I heard the approaching thoughts before I heard the footsteps that accompanied them. The sound of movement was only a faint whisper against the powder.

I was not surprised that Tanner had followed me here. I knew he’d been mulling over this coming conversation for the last few days, putting it off until he was sure of exactly what he wanted to say.

He sprang into sight about sixty yards away, leaping onto the tip of an outcropping of black rock and balancing there on the balls of his bare feet.

Tanner’s skin was silver in the starlight, and his blond, curly hair shone pale, almost pink with its strawberry tint. His amber eyes glinted as he spied me, half-buried in the snow, and his full lips stretched slowly into a smile.

Dashingly handsome. _If_ I’d really been able to see him. I sighed.

He hadn’t dressed for human eyes; he only wore a thin cotton t-shirt and a pair of shorts. Crouching down on a promontory of stone, he touched the rock with his fingertips, and his body coiled.

 _Cannonball_ , he thought.

He launched himself into the air. His shape became a dark, twisting shadow as he spun gracefully between the stars and me. He curled himself into a ball just as he struck the piled snowbank beside me.

A blizzard of snow flew up around me. The stars went black and I was buried deep in the feathery ice crystals.

I sighed again, breathing in the ice, but didn’t move to unearth myself. The blackness under the snow neither hurt nor improved the view. I still saw the same face.

“Edward?”

Then snow was flying again as Tanner swiftly disinterred me. He brushed the powder from my skin, not quite meeting my gaze.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “It was a joke.”

“I know. It was funny.”

His mouth twisted down.

“Ivan and Kirill said I should leave you alone. They think I’m annoying you.”

“Not at all,” I assured him. “On the contrary, I’m the one who’s being rude—abominably rude. I’m very sorry.”

 _You’re going home, aren’t you?_ he thought.

“I haven’t… entirely… decided that yet.”

 _But you’re not staying here._ His thought was wistful now.

“No. It doesn’t seem to be… helping.”

His lips pushed out into a thin line. “That’s my fault, isn’t it?”

“Of course not.” He hadn’t made anything easier, for certain, but the face that haunted me was the only true impediment.

_Don’t be a gentleman._

I smiled.

 _I make you uncomfortable_ , he accused.

“No.”

He raised one eyebrow, his expression so disbelieving that I had to laugh. One short laugh, followed by another sigh.

“All right,” I admitted. “A little bit.”

He sighed, too, and put his chin in his hands.

“You’re a thousand times more elegant than the stars, Tanner. Of course, you’re already well aware of that. Don’t let my stubbornness undermine your confidence.” I chuckled at the unlikeliness of _that_.

“I’m not used to rejection,” he grumbled, his lower lip pushing out into a teasing pout.

“Certainly not,” I agreed, trying with little success to block out his thoughts as he fleetingly sifted through memories of his thousands of successful conquests. Mostly, Tanner preferred human partners—they were much more populous for one thing, with the added advantage of being soft and warm. And always eager, definitely.

“Incubus,” I teased, hoping to interrupt the images flickering in his head.

He grinned, flashing his teeth. “The original.”

Unlike Carlisle, Tanner and his brothers had discovered their consciences slowly. In the end, it was their fondness for human partners that turned them against the slaughter. Now the people they loved… lived.

“When you showed up here,” Tanner said slowly, “I thought that…”

I’d known what he’d thought. And I should have guessed that he would feel that way. But I’d not been at my best for analytical thinking in that moment.

“You thought that I’d changed my mind.”

“Yes.” He scowled.

“I feel horrible for toying with your expectations, Tanner. I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t thinking. It’s just that I left in… quite a hurry.”

“I don’t suppose you’d tell me why?”

I sat up and folded my arms across my chest, my shoulders rigid. “I’d prefer not to talk about it. Please forgive my reserve.”

He was quiet again, still speculating. I ignored him, trying in vain to appreciate the stars.

He gave up after a silent moment, and his thoughts pursued a new direction.

_Where will you go, Edward, if you leave? Back to Carlisle?_

“I don’t think so,” I whispered.

Where would I go? I could not think of one place on the entire planet that held any interest for me. There was nothing I wanted to see or do. Because no matter where I went, I would not be going _to_ anywhere—I would only be running _from_.

I hated that. When had I become such a coward?

Tanner threw his muscular arm around my shoulders. I stiffened but did not flinch from his touch. He meant it as nothing more than friendly comfort. Mostly.

“I think that you _will_ go back,” he said, his voice taking on just a hint of his long-lost Russian accent. “No matter what it is… or who it is… that haunts you. You’ll face it head-on. You’re the type.”

His thoughts were as certain as his words. I tried to embrace the vision of myself that he saw. The one who faced things head-on. It was pleasant to think of myself that way again. I’d never doubted my courage, my ability to face difficulty, before that horrible hour in a high school Biology class such a short time ago.

I kissed his cheek, pulling back swiftly when he twisted his face toward mine. He smiled ruefully at my quickness.

“Thank you, Tanner. I needed to hear that.”

His thoughts turned petulant. “You’re welcome, I guess. I wish you would be more reasonable about things, Edward.”

“I’m sorry, Tanner. You know you’re far too good for me. I just… haven’t found what I’m looking for yet.”

“Well, if you leave before I see you again… goodbye, Edward.”

“Goodbye, Tanner.” As I said the words, I could see it. I could see myself leaving. Being strong enough to go back to the one place I wanted to be. “Again, thank you.”

He was on his feet in one nimble move, and then he was running away, ghosting across the snow so quickly that his feet had no time to sink in. He left no prints behind him. He didn’t look back. My rejection bothered him more than he’d let on before, even in his thoughts. He wouldn’t want to see me again before I left.

My mouth twisted downward. I didn’t like hurting Tanner, though his feelings were not deep, hardly pure, and, in any case, not something I could return. It still made me feel less than a gentleman.

I put my chin on my knees and stared up at the stars again, though I was suddenly anxious to be on my way. I knew that Archie would see me coming home, that he would tell the others. This would make them happy—Carlisle and Esme especially. But I gazed at the stars for one more moment, trying to see past the face in my head. Between me and the brilliant lights in the sky, a pair of bewildered sky-blue eyes wondered at my motives, seeming to ask what this decision would mean for _him_. Of course, I couldn’t be sure that was really the information his curious eyes sought. Even in my imagination, I couldn’t hear his thoughts. Beau Swan’s eyes continued to question, and an unobstructed view of the stars continued to elude me. With a heavy sigh, I gave up and got to my feet. If I ran, I would be back to Carlisle’s car in less than an hour.

In a hurry to see my family—and wanting very much to be the Edward who faced things head-on—I raced across the starlit snowfield, leaving no footprints.

******

“It’s going to be okay,” Archie breathed. His eyes were unfocused, and Jessamine had one hand lightly under his elbow, guiding him forward as we walked into the run-down cafeteria in a close-huddled group. Rosalie and Emmett led the way, Emmett looking ridiculously like a bodyguard in the middle of hostile territory. Rose looked wary, too, but much more irritated than protective.

“Of course it is,” I grumbled. Their behavior was ludicrous. If I weren’t positive that I could handle this moment, I would have stayed home.

The sudden shift from our normal, even playful morning—it had snowed in the night, and Emmett and Jessamine were not above taking advantage of my distraction to bombard me with slushballs; when they got bored with my lack of response, they’d turned on each other—to this overdone vigilance would have been comical if it weren’t so irritating.

“He’s not here yet, but the way he’s going to come in… he won’t be downwind if we sit in our regular spot.”

“ _Of course_ we’ll sit in our regular spot. Stop it, Archie. You’re getting on my nerves. I’ll be absolutely fine.”

He blinked once as Jessamine helped him into his seat, and his eyes finally focused on my face.

“Hmm,” he said, sounding surprised. “I think you’re right.”

“ _Of course_ I am,” I muttered.

I hated being the focus of their concern. I felt a sudden sympathy for Jessamine, remembering all the times we’d hovered protectively over her. She met my glance briefly, and grinned.

_Annoying, isn’t it?_

I glowered at her.

Was it just last week that this long, drab room had seemed so killingly dull to me? That it had seemed almost like sleep, like a coma, to be here?

Today my nerves were stretched tight—piano wires, tensed to sing at the lightest pressure. My senses were hyperalert; I scanned every sound, every sight, every movement of the air that touched my skin, every thought. Especially the thoughts. There was only one sense that I kept locked down, refused to use. Smell, of course. I didn’t breathe.

I was expecting to hear more about the Cullens in the thoughts that I sifted through. All day I’d been waiting, searching for whichever new acquaintance Beau Swan might have confided in, trying to see the direction the new gossip would take. But there was nothing. No one particularly noticed the five vampires in the cafeteria, just as before the boy had come. Several of the humans here were still thinking of him, still thinking the same thoughts from last week. Instead of finding this unutterably boring, I was now fascinated.

Had he said nothing to anyone about me?

There was no way that he had not noticed my black, murderous glare. I had seen him react to it. Surely, I’d traumatized him. I was convinced that he would have mentioned it to someone, maybe even have exaggerated the story a bit to make it better. Given me a few menacing lines.

And then he’d also heard me trying to get out of our shared Biology class. He must have wondered, after seeing my expression, whether he was the cause. A normal guy would have asked around, compared his experience to others’, looked for common ground that would explain my behavior so he didn’t feel singled out. Humans were constantly desperate to feel normal, to fit in. To blend in with everyone else around them, like a featureless flock of sheep. The need was particularly strong during the insecure adolescent years. This boy would be no exception to that rule.

But no one at all took notice of us sitting here, at our usual table. Beau must be exceptionally shy if he’d hadn’t confided in anyone. Perhaps he had spoken to his father; maybe that was the strongest relationship… though that seemed unlikely, given that he had spent so little time with him throughout his life. He would be closer to his mother. Still, I would have to pass by Chief Swan sometime soon and listen to what he was thinking.

“Anything new?” Jessamine asked.

I concentrated, allowing all the swarms of thoughts to invade my mind again. There wasn’t anything that stood out; no one was thinking of us. Despite my earlier worries, it didn’t seem that there was anything wrong with my abilities, aside from the silent boy. I’d shared my concerns with Carlisle upon my return, but he’d only ever heard of talents growing stronger with practice. Never did they atrophy.

Jessamine waited impatiently.

“Nothing. He… must not have said anything.”

All of them raised eyebrows at this news.

“Maybe you’re not as scary as you think you are,” Emmett said, chuckling. “I bet I could have frightened him better than _that_.”

I rolled my eyes at him.

“Wonder why…?” He puzzled again over my revelation about the boy’s unique silence.

“We’ve been over that. I don’t _know_.”

“He’s coming in,” Archie murmured then. My body froze. “Try to look human.”

“Human, you say?” Emmett asked.

He held up his right fist, twisting his fingers to reveal the snowball he’d saved in his palm. It had not melted there; he’d squeezed it into a lumpy block of ice. He had his eyes on Jessamine, but I saw the direction of his thoughts. So did Archie, of course. When he abruptly hurled the ice chunk at him, he flicked it away with a casual flutter of his fingers. The ice ricocheted across the length of the cafeteria, too fast to be visible to human eyes, and shattered with a sharp crack against the brick wall. The brick cracked, too.

The heads in that corner of the room all turned to stare at the pile of broken ice on the floor, and then swiveled to find the culprit. They didn’t look farther than a few tables away. No one looked at us.

“Very human, Emmett,” Rosalie said scathingly. “Why don’t you punch through the wall while you’re at it?”

“It would look more impressive if you did it, gorgeous.”

I tried to pay attention to them, keeping a grin fixed on my face as though I were part of their banter. I did not allow myself to look toward the line where I knew he was standing. But that was all I was listening to.

I could hear Jeremy’s impatience with the new boy, who seemed to be distracted, too, standing motionless in the moving line. I saw, in Jeremy’s thoughts, that Beau Swan’s cheeks were once more colored bright red with blood.

I pulled in a few short, shallow breaths, ready to quit breathing if any hint of his scent touched the air near me.

McKayla Newton was with the two boys. I heard both her voices, mental and verbal, when she asked Jeremy what was wrong with the Swan boy. It was distasteful the way her thoughts wrapped around him, the flicker of already established fantasies that clouded her mind while she watched him start and look up from his reverie as though he’d forgotten she was there.

“Nothing,” I heard Beau say in that quiet, clear voice. It seemed to ring like a struck bell over the babble in the cafeteria, but I knew that was just because I was listening for it so intently.

He grabbed a soda bottle and continued as he moved to catch up with the line.

I couldn’t help flickering one glance in his direction. He was staring at the floor, the blood slowly fading from his face. I looked away quickly, to Emmett, who laughed at the now pained-looking smile on my face.

_You look sick, brother mine._

I rearranged my features so the expression would seem casual and effortless.

Jeremy was wondering aloud about the boy’s lack of appetite. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“Actually, I feel a little sick.” His voice was lower, but still very clear.

Why did it bother me, the protective concern that suddenly emanated from McKayla Newton’s thoughts? What did it matter that there was a possessive edge to them? It wasn’t my business if McKayla Newton felt unnecessarily anxious for him. Perhaps this was the way everyone responded to him. Hadn’t I wanted, instinctively, to protect him, too? Before I’d wanted to kill him, that is…

But _was_ the boy ill?

It was hard to judge—he looked so delicate with his translucent skin.… Then I realized that I was worrying, just like that dimwitted girl, and I forced myself not to think about his health.

Regardless, I didn’t like monitoring him through McKayla’s thoughts. I switched to Jeremy’s, watching carefully as the three of them chose which table to sit at. Fortunately, they sat with Jeremy’s usual companions, at one of the first tables in the room. Not downwind, just as Archie had promised.

Archie elbowed me. _He’s going to look soon. Act human._

I clenched my teeth behind my grin.

“Ease up, Edward,” Emmett said. “Honestly. So you kill one human. That’s hardly the end of the world.”

“You would know,” I murmured.

Emmett laughed. “You’ve got to learn to get over things. Like I do. Eternity is a long time to wallow in guilt.”

Just then, Archie tossed a smaller handful of ice that he’d been hiding into Emmett’s unsuspecting face.

He blinked, surprised, and then grinned in anticipation.

“You asked for it,” he said as he leaned across the table and shook his ice-encrusted hair in his direction. The snow, melting in the warm room, flew out from his hair in a thick shower of half liquid, half ice.

“Ew!” Rose complained as she and Archie recoiled from the deluge.

Archie laughed, and we all joined in. I could see in Archie’s head how he’d orchestrated this perfect moment, and I knew that the boy—I should stop thinking of him that way, as if he were the only boy in the world—that _Beau_ would be watching us laugh and play, looking as happy and human and unrealistically ideal as a Norman Rockwell painting.

Archie kept laughing and held his tray up as a shield. The boy—Beau—must still be staring at us.

 _… staring at the Cullens again_ , someone thought, catching my attention.

I looked automatically toward the unintentional call, easily recognizing the voice as my eyes found their destination—I’d been listening to it so much today.

But my eyes slid right past Jeremy and focused on the boy’s penetrating gaze.

He turned his head completely toward Jeremy, shifting his shoulders as well. Jeremy leaned away, reacting to the sudden movement.

What was he thinking? The frustration seemed to be getting more acute as time went on, rather than dulling. I tried—uncertain, for I’d never done this before—to probe with my mind at the silence around him. My extra hearing had always come to me naturally, without asking; I’d never had to work at it. But I concentrated now, trying to break through whatever armor surrounded him.

Nothing but silence.

 _What_ is _it with him? Everyone just stares, even Edward Cullen…_ Jeremy thought, echoing my own irritation.

“Edward Cullen is staring at you,” he said, looking over the Swan boy’s shoulder. There was no hint of his jealous annoyance in his tone. Jeremy seemed to be skilled at feigning friendship.

I listened, too engrossed, to the boy’s response.

“He doesn’t look angry, does he?” he whispered back.

So he _had_ noticed my wild reaction last week. Of course he had.

The question confused Jeremy. I saw my own face in his thoughts as he checked my expression, but I did not meet his glance. I was still concentrating on the boy, trying to hear _something_. Intent focus didn’t seem to help at all.

“No,” Jeremy told him, and I knew that he wished he could say yes—how it rankled him, my staring—though there was no trace of that in his voice. “Did you offend him or something?”

“No! I’ve never even talked to him. I just… don’t think he likes me very much,” the boy whispered back, keeping his body angled toward Jeremy, slumping his shoulders as if he were suddenly tired. I tried to understand the motion, but I could only make guesses. Maybe he _was_ tired.

“The Cullens don’t like anybody,” Jeremy reassured him. “Well, they don’t notice anybody enough to like them.” _They never used to._ His thought was a grumble of complaint. “But he’s still staring at you.”

“Stop looking at him,” the boy said anxiously.

Jeremy snickered, then looked away from our table.

The boy did not look away from his table for the rest of the hour. I thought—though, of course, I could not be sure—that this was deliberate. It seemed as though he wanted to look at me. His body would shift slightly in my direction, his chin would begin to turn, and then he would catch himself, take a deep breath, and stare fixedly at whoever was speaking.

I ignored the other thoughts around the boy for the most part, as they were not, momentarily, about him. McKayla Newton was planning a snowball fight in the parking lot after school, not seeming to realize that the snow had already shifted to rain. The flutter of soft flakes against the roof had become the more common patter of raindrops. Could she really not hear the change? It seemed loud to me.

When the lunch period ended, I stayed in my seat. The humans filed out, and I caught myself trying to distinguish the sound of his footsteps from the rest, as if there were something important or unusual about them. How stupid.

My family made no move to leave, either. They waited to see what I would do.

Would I go to class, sit beside the boy, where I could smell the absurdly potent scent of his blood and feel the warmth of his pulse in the air on my skin? Was I strong enough for that? Or had I had enough for one day?

As a family, we’d already discussed this moment from every possible angle. Carlisle disapproved of the risk, but he wouldn’t impose his will on mine. Jessamine disapproved nearly as much, but from fear of exposure rather than any concern for humankind. Rosalie only worried about how it would affect her life. Archie saw so many obscure, conflicting futures that his visions were atypically unhelpful. Esme thought I could do no wrong. And Emmett just wanted to compare stories about his own experiences with particularly appealing scents. He pulled Jessamine into his reminiscing, though Jessamine’s history with self-control was so short and so uneven that she was unable to be sure she’d ever had an analogous struggle. Emmett, on the other hand, remembered two such incidents. His memories of them were not encouraging. But he’d been younger then, not as adept at self-control. Surely, I was stronger than that.

“I… _think_ it’s okay,” Archie said, hesitant. “Your mind is set. I _think_ you’ll make it through the hour.”

But Archie knew well how quickly a mind could change.

“Why push it, Edward?” Jessamine asked. Though she didn’t want to feel smug that I was the weak one now, I could hear that she did, just a little. “Go home. Take it slow.”

“What’s the big deal?” Emmett disagreed. “Either he will or he won’t kill him. Might as well get it over with, either way.”

“I don’t want to move yet,” Rosalie complained. “I don’t want to start over. We’re almost out of high school, Emmett. _Finally._ ”

I was evenly torn on the decision. I wanted, wanted badly, to face this head-on rather than running away again. But I didn’t want to push myself too far, either. It had been a mistake last week for Jessamine to go so long without hunting; was this just as pointless a mistake?

I didn’t want to uproot my family. None of them would thank me for that.

But I wanted to go to my Biology class. I realized that I wanted to see his face again.

That’s what decided it for me. That curiosity. I was angry with myself for feeling it. Hadn’t I promised myself that I wouldn’t let the silence of the boy’s mind make me unduly interested in him? And yet, here I was, most unduly interested.

I wanted to know what he was thinking. His mind was closed, but his eyes were very open. Perhaps I could read them instead.

“No, Rose, I think it really will be okay,” Archie said. “It’s… firming up. I’m ninety-three percent sure that nothing bad will happen if he goes to class.” He looked at me, inquisitive, wondering what had changed in my thoughts that made his vision of the future more secure.

Would curiosity be enough to keep Beau Swan alive?

Emmett was right, though—why not get it over with, either way? I would face the temptation head-on.

“Go to class,” I ordered, pushing away from the table. I turned and strode away from them without looking back. I could hear Archie’s worry, Jessamine’s censure, Emmett’s approval, and Rosalie’s irritation trailing after me.

I took one last deep breath at the door of the classroom, and then held it in my lungs as I walked into the small, warm space.

I was not late. Mr. Banner was still setting up for today’s lab. The boy sat at my—at _our_ table, his face down again, staring at the folder he was doodling on. I examined the sketch as I approached, interested in even this trivial creation of his mind, but it was meaningless. Just a random scribbling of loops within loops. Perhaps he was not concentrating on the pattern, but thinking of something else?

I pulled my chair back with unnecessary roughness, letting it scrape across the linoleum—humans always felt more comfortable when noise announced someone’s approach.

I knew he heard the sound; he did not look up, but his hand missed a loop in the design he was drawing, making it unbalanced.

Why didn’t he look up? Probably he was frightened. I must be sure to leave him with a different impression this time. Make him think he’d been imagining things before.

“Hello,” I said in the quiet voice I used when I wanted to make humans more comfortable, forming a polite smile with my lips that would not show any teeth.

He looked up then, his wide blue eyes startled and full of silent questions. It was the same expression that had been obstructing my vision for the past week.

As I stared into those oddly deep blue eyes—the color was like the sky, there was a depth and transparency—I realized that my hate, the hate I’d imagined this boy somehow deserved for simply existing, had evaporated. Not breathing now, not tasting his scent, I found it hard to believe that anyone so vulnerable could ever be deserving of hatred.

His cheeks began to flush, and he said nothing.

I kept my eyes on his, focusing only on their questioning depths, and tried to ignore the appetizing color of his skin. I had enough breath to speak for a while longer without inhaling.

“My name is Edward Cullen,” I said, though he already knew it. It was the polite way to begin. “I didn’t have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Beau Swan.”

He seemed confused—there was that little pucker between his eyes again. It took him half a second longer than it should have to respond.

“H-how do you know my name?” he demanded, and his voice shook just a little.

I must have truly terrified him, and this made me feel guilty. I laughed gently—it was a sound that I knew made humans more at ease.

“Oh, I think everyone knows your name.” Surely, he must have realized that he’d become the center of attention in this monotonous place. “The whole town’s been waiting for you to arrive.”

He frowned as if this information was unpleasant. I supposed, being shy as he appeared to be, attention would seem like a bad thing to him. Most humans felt the opposite. Though they didn’t want to stand out from the herd, at the same time they craved a spotlight for their individual uniformity.

“No,” he said. “I meant, why did you call me Beau?”

“Do you prefer Beaufort?” I asked, perplexed that I couldn’t see where this question was leading. I didn’t understand. He’d made his preference clear many times that first day. Were all humans this incomprehensible without the mental context as a guide? How much I must rely on that extra sense. Would I be completely blind without it?

“ _Absolutely_ not,” he answered, leaning his head slightly to one side. His expression—if I was reading it correctly—was torn between embarrassment and confusion. “But I think Charlie—I mean my dad—must call me that behind my back. That’s what everyone here seems to know me as.” His skin darkened one shade pinker.

“Oh,” I said, and quickly looked away from his face.

I’d just realized what his questions meant: I had slipped up—made an error. If I hadn’t been eavesdropping on all the others that first day, then I would have addressed him initially by his full name. He’d noticed the difference.

I felt a pang of unease. It was very quick of him to pick up on my slip. Quite astute, especially for someone who was supposed to be terrified by my proximity.

But I had bigger problems than whatever suspicions about me he might be keeping locked inside his head.

I was out of air. If I were going to speak to him again, I would have to inhale.

It would be hard to avoid speaking. Unfortunately for him, sharing this table made him my lab partner, and we would have to work together today. It would seem odd—and incomprehensibly rude—for me to ignore him while we did the lab. It would make him more suspicious, more afraid.

I leaned as far away from him as I could without moving my seat, twisting my head out into the aisle. I braced myself, locking my muscles in place, and then sucked in one quick chestful of air, breathing through my mouth alone.

Ahh!

It was intensely painful, like swallowing burning coals. Even without smelling him, I could taste him on my tongue. The craving was every bit as strong as that first moment I’d caught his scent last week.

I gritted my teeth and tried to compose myself.

“Get started,” Mr. Banner commanded.

It took every single ounce of self-control I’d achieved in seventy-four years of hard work to turn back to the boy, who was staring down at the table, and smile.

“Should I go first, partner?” I offered.

He looked up at my expression and his face went blank. Was there something off? In his eyes, I saw the reflection of my usual human-friendly composition of features. The facade looked perfect. Was he frightened again? He didn’t speak.

“Uh, sure,” he said, and red patched of blood started pooling into his face. “go ahead.”

I stared at the equipment on the table—the battered microscope, the box of slides—rather than watch the blood wax and wane under his clear skin. I took another quick breath, through my teeth, and winced as the taste scorched the inside of my throat.

“Prophase,” I said after a quick examination. I started to remove the slide, then paused and looked up at him. “Or did you want to check?” I asked.

“Uh, no, I’m good,” he responded, looking almost flustered when he said it.

I was still too unsettled to look at him. Breathing as quietly as I could through my gritted teeth and trying to ignore the fiery thirst, I concentrated on the simple assignment, writing the word on the appropriate line on the lab sheet and then switching out the first slide for the next.

I glanced at the slide.

“Anaphase,” I said to myself as I wrote it on the second line.

I heard the though before the call. “Mr. Cullen?”, Mr. Banner asked in our direction.

“Yes, Mr. Banner?” I responded, sliding the microscope in Beau’s direction as carefully as I could manage.

“Perhaps you should let Mr. Swan have an opportunity to learn?”

“Of course, Mr. Banner” I turned and gave Beau a nod.

He slid down to look through the eyepiece. After a quick look, he looked up and said “Metaphase.”

“Do you mind if I look?” I asked. Instinctively—stupidly, as if I were one of his kind—I reached out to stop his hand from removing the slide. For one second, the heat of his skin burned into mine. It was like an electric pulse—the heat shot through my fingers and up my arm. He yanked his hand out from under mine.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. Needing somewhere to look, I grasped the microscope and stared briefly into the eyepiece. He was right.

“Metaphase,” I agreed.

What was he thinking now? What had it felt like to him when I had touched his hand? My skin must have been ice-cold—repulsive. No wonder he was so quiet.

Sitting beside him was like sitting next to a heat lamp. I could feel myself warming slightly to the higher temperature.

He continued trying to exchange the slides, but fumled with the tiny squares and dropped them. One fell over the edge of the table, but I caught it before it hit the ground.

“Ugh,” he exhaled, sounding mortified. “Sorry.”

“Well, the last is no mystery regardless,” I said, writing _Telophase_ into the last line of the worksheet.

We were the only ones done—the others in the class were having a harder time with the lab. McKayla Newton seemed to be having trouble concentrating; she was trying to watch Beau and me.

 _Why is he acting so friendly with him?Beau’s been acting all weird since he came back. Wish he would’ve stayed wherever he went_ , McKayla thought, eyeing me sulfurously. Interesting. I hadn’t realized the girl harbored any specific ill will toward me, especially after having devoted so much time to thinking about _me_ before. This was a new development, about as recent as the boy’s arrival, it seemed. Even more interestingly, I found—to my surprise—that the feeling was mutual.

I looked down at the boy again, bemused by the vast range of havoc and upheaval that, despite his ordinary, unthreatening appearance, he was wreaking on my life.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t see what McKayla was going on about. He was actually sort of handsome for a human, in an unusual way. Better than that, his face was… unexpected. Not quite symmetrical—his narrow chin out of balance with his wide cheekbones; extreme in the coloring—the contrast of his light skin and dark hair; and then there were the eyes, too big for his face, brimming over with silent secrets.…

Eyes that were suddenly boring into mine.

I stared back at him, trying to guess even one of those secrets.

“Did you get contacts?” he asked abruptly.

What a strange question. “No.” I almost smiled at the idea of improving _my_ eyesight.

“Oh,” he mumbled. “I thought there was something different about your eyes.”

I felt suddenly colder again as I realized that I was not the only one attempting to ferret out secrets today.

I shrugged, my shoulders stiff, and glared straight ahead to where the teacher was making his rounds.

Of course there was something different about my eyes since the last time he’d stared into them. To prepare myself for today’s ordeal, today’s temptation, I’d spent the entire weekend hunting, satiating my thirst as much as possible, overdoing it, really. I’d glutted myself on the blood of animals, not that it made much difference in the face of the outrageous flavor floating on the air around him. When I’d glared at him last, my eyes had been black with thirst. Now, my body swimming with blood, my eyes were a warm gold—light amber.

Another slip. If I’d seen what he meant with his question, I could have just told him yes.

I’d sat beside humans for two years now at this school, and he was the first to examine me closely enough to note the change in my eye color. The others, while admiring the beauty of my family, tended to look down quickly when we returned their stares. They shied away, blocking the details of our appearances in an instinctive endeavor to keep themselves from understanding. Ignorance was bliss to the human mind.

Why did it have to be _this_ boy who would see too much?

Mr. Banner approached our table. I gratefully inhaled the gush of clean air he brought with him before it could mix with Beau’s scent.

“So, Edward,” he said, looking over our answers, “didn’t you think Beaufort should get a chance with the microscope?”

“Beau,” I corrected him reflexively. “Actually, he identified half of the slides.”

Mr. Banner’s thoughts were skeptical as he turned to look at the boy. “Have you done this lab before?”

I watched, engrossed, as he smiled, looking slightly embarrassed.

“Not with onion root.”

“Whitefish blastula?” Mr. Banner probed.

“Yeah.”

This surprised him. Today’s lab was something he’d pulled from a senior-class course. He nodded thoughtfully at the boy. “Were you in an advanced placement program in Phoenix?”

“Yes.”

He was advanced, then, intelligent for a human. This did not surprise me.

“Well,” Mr. Banner said, pursing his lips, “I guess it’s good you two are lab partners.” He turned and walked away, mumbling “So the other kids can get a chance to learn something for themselves” under his breath. I doubted the boy could hear that. He began scrawling loops across her folder again.

Two slips so far in one half hour. An extremely poor showing on my part. Though I had no idea at all what the boy thought of me—how much did he fear, how much did he suspect?—I knew I needed to put forth a better effort to leave him with a new impression. Something to quell his memories of our ferocious last encounter.

“It’s too bad about the snow, isn’t it?” I said, repeating the small talk that I’d heard a dozen students discuss already. A boring, standard topic of conversation. The weather—always safe.

He stared at me with obvious doubt in his eyes—an abnormal reaction to my very normal words. “Not really.”

I tried to steer the conversation back to trite paths. He was from a much brighter, warmer place—his skin seemed to reflect that somehow, despite its fairness—and the cold must make him uncomfortable. My icy touch certainly had.

“You don’t like the cold,” I guessed.

“Or the wet,” he agreed.

“Forks must be a difficult place for you to live.” _Perhaps you should not have come here_ , I wanted to add. _Perhaps you should go back where you belong._

I wasn’t sure I wanted that, though. I would always remember the scent of his blood—was there any guarantee that I wouldn’t eventually follow him? Besides, if he left, his mind would forever remain a mystery, a constant, nagging puzzle.

“You have no idea,” he said in a low voice, glowering past me for a moment.

His answers were never what I expected. They made me want to ask more questions.

“Why did you come here, then?” I demanded, realizing instantly that my tone was too accusatory, not casual enough for the conversation. The question sounded rude, prying.

“It’s… complicated.”

He blinked, leaving it at that, and I nearly imploded out of curiosity—in that second, it burned almost as hot as the thirst in my throat. Actually, I found that it was getting slightly easier to breathe; the agony was becoming a tiny bit more bearable through familiarity.

“I think I can keep up,” I insisted. Perhaps common courtesy would compel him to answer my questions as long as I was impolite enough to ask them.

He stared down silently at his hands. This made me impatient. I wanted to put my hand under his chin and tilt his head up so that I could read his eyes. But of course I could never touch his skin again.

He looked up suddenly. It was a relief to be able to see the emotions in his eyes. He spoke in a rush, hurrying through the words.

“My mother got remarried.”

Ah, this was human enough, easy to understand. Sorrow flitted across his face, bringing the small pucker back between his brows.

“That doesn’t sound so complex,” I said, my voice gentle without my working to make it that way. His dejection left me oddly helpless, wishing there was something I could do to make him feel better. A strange impulse. “When did that happen?”

“Last September.” He exhaled heavily—not quite a sigh. I froze for a moment as his warm breath brushed my face.

“And you don’t like him,” I guessed after that short pause, still fishing for more information.

“No, Phil is fine,” he said, correcting my assumption. There was a hint of a smile now around the corners of his full lips. “A little young maybe, but he’s a good guy.”

This didn’t fit with the scenario I’d been constructing in my head.

“Why didn’t you stay with them?” My voice was too eager; it sounded like I was being nosy. Which I was, admittedly.

“Phil travels most of the time. He plays ball for a living.” The little smile grew more pronounced; this career choice amused him.

I smiled, too, without choosing the expression. I wasn’t trying to make him feel at ease. His smile just made me want to smile in response—to be in on the secret.

“Have I heard of him?” I ran through the rosters of professional ballplayers in my head, wondering which Phil was his.

“Probably not. He doesn’t play _well_.” Another smile. “Just minor league. He moves around a lot.”

The rosters in my head shifted instantly, and I’d tabulated a list of possibilities in less than a second. At the same time, I was imagining the new scenario.

“And your mother sent you here so that she could travel with him,” I said. Making assumptions seemed to get more information out of him than questions did. It worked again. His chin jutted out, and his expression was suddenly stubborn.

“No, she didn’t,” he said, and his voice had a new, hard edge to it. My assumption had upset him, though I couldn’t quite see how. “I sent myself.”

I could not guess at his meaning, or the source behind his pique. I was entirely lost.

There was just no making sense of the boy. He wasn’t like other humans. Maybe the silence of his thoughts and the perfume of his scent were not the only unusual things about him.

“I don’t understand,” I admitted, hating to concede.

He sighed and stared into my eyes for longer than most normal humans were able to stand.

“She stayed with me at first, but she missed him,” Beau explained slowly, his tone growing more forlorn with each word. “It made her unhappy… so I decided it was time to spend some quality time with Charlie.”

The tiny pucker between his eyes deepened.

“But now you’re unhappy,” I murmured. I kept speaking my hypotheses aloud, hoping to learn from his refutations. This one, however, did not seem as far off the mark.

“And?” he said, as if this was not even an aspect to be considered.

I continued to stare into his eyes, feeling that I’d finally gotten my first real glimpse into his soul. I saw in that one word where he ranked himself among his own priorities. Unlike most humans, his own needs were far down the list.

He was selfless.

As I saw this, the mystery of the person hiding inside this quiet mind began to clear a little.

“That doesn’t seem fair,” I said. I shrugged, trying to seem casual.

He laughed, but there was no amusement in the sound. “Haven’t you heard? Life isn’t fair.”

I wanted to laugh at his words, though I, too, felt no real amusement. I knew a little something about the unfairness of life. “I believe I _have_ heard that somewhere before.”

He stared back at me, seeming confused again. His eyes flickered away, and then came back to mine.

“So that’s it,” he told me.

I was not ready to let this conversation end. The little _v_ between his eyes, a remnant of his sorrow, bothered me.

“You put on a good show.” I spoke slowly, still considering this next hypothesis. “But I’d be willing to bet that you’re suffering more than you let anyone see.”

He made a face, his eyes narrowing and his mouth twisting into a lopsided frown, and he looked back toward the front of the class. He didn’t like it when I guessed right. He wasn’t the average martyr—he didn’t want an audience for his pain.

“I repeat… And?”

That made me smile. “I don’t entirely understand you, that’s all.”

“Why would you want to?” he demanded, still staring away.

“That’s a very good question,” I admitted, more to myself than to him.

His discernment was better than mine—he saw right to the core of things while I floundered around the edges, sifting blindly through clues. The details of his very human life should _not_ matter to me. It was wrong for me to care what he thought. Beyond protecting my family from suspicion, human thoughts were not significant.

I was not used to being the less intuitive of any pairing. I relied on my extra hearing too much—I clearly was not as perceptive as I gave myself credit for.

The boy sighed and glowered toward the front of the classroom. Something about his frustrated expression was humorous. The whole situation, the whole conversation, was humorous. No one had ever been in more danger from me than this small human boy—at any moment I might, distracted by my ridiculous absorption in the conversation, inhale through my nose and attack him before I could stop myself—and _he_ was irritated because I hadn’t answered his question.

He glanced at me quickly, and then his eyes seemed to get trapped by my gaze.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “Did I… Am I annoying you?”

“No,” I told him, “if anything, I’m more annoyed with myself.”

“Why?” he asked, seeming genuinely confused at the reaction.

“Reading people… it usually comes very easily to me. But I can’t – I guess I don’t quite know what to make of you. Is that funny?” I asked, laughing at my own joke.

He frowned, disgruntled. “More… unexpected. My mom always calls me her open book. According to her, you can all but read my thoughts printing out across my forehead.”

I stared at him in amazement. He was upset because he thought I could see through him. How bizarre. I’d never expended so much effort to understand someone in all my life—or rather existence, as _life_ was hardly the right word. I did not truly have a _life_.

“I suppose I’ve gotten overconfident,” I said in a low voice.

“Um, sorry?” he said, a look of confusion on his face

I laughed at his apology then, letting my lips pull back to expose the rows of gleaming, steel-strong teeth behind them.

It was a stupid thing to do, but I was abruptly, unexpectedly desperate to get some kind of warning through to the boy. His body was closer to me than before, having shifted unconsciously in the course of our conversation. All the little markers and signs that were sufficient to scare off the rest of humanity did not seem to be working on him. Why did he not cringe away from me in terror? Surely he had seen enough of my darker side to realize the danger.

I didn’t get to see if my warning had the intended effect. Mr. Banner called for the class’s attention just then, and he turned away from me at once. He seemed a little relieved for the interruption, so maybe he understood unconsciously.

I hoped he did.

I recognized the fascination growing inside me, even as I tried to root it out. I could not afford to find Beau Swan interesting. Or rather, _he_ could not afford that. Already, I was anxious for another chance to talk to him. I wanted to know more about his mother, his life before he came here, his relationship with his father. All the meaningless details that would flesh out his character further. But every second I spent with him was a mistake, a risk he shouldn’t have to take.

Absentmindedly, he lifted his hand and combed his hair just at the moment that I allowed myself another breath. A particularly concentrated wave of his scent hit the back of my throat.

It was like the first day—like the grenade. The pain of the burning dryness made me dizzy. I had to grasp the table again to keep myself in my seat. This time I had slightly more control. I didn’t break anything, at least. The monster growled inside me but took no pleasure in my pain. He was too tightly bound. For the moment.

I stopped breathing altogether and leaned as far from the boy as I could.

No, I could not afford to find him fascinating. The more interesting I found him, the more likely it was that I would kill him. I’d already made two minor slips today. Would I make a third, one that was _not_ minor?

As soon as the bell sounded, I fled from the classroom—probably destroying whatever impression of politeness I’d halfway constructed in the course of the hour. Again, I gasped at the clean, wet air outside as though it was a healing attar. I hurried to put as much distance as possible between myself and the boy.

Emmett waited for me outside the door of our Spanish class. He read my wild expression for a moment.

 _How did it go?_ he wondered warily.

“Nobody died,” I mumbled.

_I guess that’s something. When I saw Archie ditching there at the end, I thought…_

As we walked into the classroom, I saw his memory from just a few moments earlier, seen through the open door of his last class: Archie walking briskly and blank-faced across the grounds toward the science building. I felt his remembered urge to get up and join him, and then his decision to stay. If Archie needed his help, he would ask.

I closed my eyes in horror and disgust as I slumped into my seat. “I hadn’t realized it was that close. I didn’t think I was going to… I didn’t see that it was that bad,” I whispered.

 _It wasn’t_ , he reassured me. _Nobody died, right?_

“Right,” I said through my teeth. “Not this time.”

_Maybe it will get easier._

“Sure.”

 _Or maybe you kill him._ He shrugged. _You wouldn’t be the first one to mess up. No one would judge you too harshly. Sometimes a person just smells too good. I’m impressed you’ve lasted this long._

“Not helping, Emmett.”

I was revolted by his acceptance of the idea that I would kill the boy, that this was somehow inevitable. Was it his fault that he smelled so good?

 _I know when it happened to me…,_ he reminisced, taking me back with him half a century, to a country lane at dusk, where a middle-aged woman was pulling her dried sheets down from a line strung between apple trees. I’d seen this before, the strongest of his two encounters, but the memory seemed particularly vivid now—perhaps because my throat still ached from the last hour’s scorching. Emmett remembered the smell of apples hanging heavy in the air—the harvest was over and the rejected fruits were scattered on the ground, the bruises in their skin leaking their fragrance out in thick clouds. A freshly mowed field of hay was a background to that scent, a harmony. He walked up the lane, all but oblivious to the woman, on an errand for Rosalie. The sky was purple overhead, orange over the mountains to the west. He would have continued up the meandering cart path and there would have been no reason to remember the evening, except that a sudden night breeze blew the white sheets out like sails and fanned the woman’s scent across Emmett’s face.

“Ah,” I groaned quietly. As if my own remembered thirst was not enough.

_I know. I didn’t last half a second. I didn’t even think about resisting._

His memory became far too explicit for me to stand.

I jumped to my feet, my teeth locked hard.

“ _Estás bien_ , Edward?” Mrs. Goff asked, startled by my sudden movement. I could see my face in her mind, and I knew that I looked far from well.

“ _Perdóname_ ,” I muttered as I darted for the door.

“Emmett, _por favor, puedes ayudar a tu hermano?_ ” she asked, gesturing helplessly toward me as I rushed out of the room.

“Sure,” I heard him say. And then he was right behind me.

He followed me to the far side of the building, where he caught up to me and put his hand on my shoulder.

I shoved his hand away with unnecessary force. It would have shattered the bones in a human hand, and the bones in the arm attached to it.

“Sorry, Edward.”

“I know.” I drew in deep gasps of air, trying to clear my head and lungs.

“Is it as bad as that?” he asked, trying not to think of the scent and the flavor of his memory as he asked, and not quite succeeding.

“Worse, Emmett, worse.”

He was quiet for a moment.

_Maybe…_

“No, it would not be better if I got it over with. Go back to class, Emmett. I want to be alone.”

He turned without another word or thought and walked quickly away. He would tell the Spanish teacher that I was sick, or ditching, or a dangerously out of control vampire. Did his excuse really matter? Maybe I wasn’t coming back. Maybe I had to leave.

I returned to my car to wait for school to end. To hide. Again.

I should have spent the time making decisions or trying to bolster my resolve, but, like an addict, I found myself searching through the babble of thoughts emanating from the school buildings. The familiar voices stood out, but I wasn’t interested in listening to Archie’s visions or Rosalie’s complaints right now. I found Jeremy easily, but the boy was not with him, so I continued searching. McKayla Newton’s thoughts caught my attention, and I located him at last, in Gym with her. She was unhappy because I’d spoken to him today in Biology. She was running over his response when she’d brought the subject up.

_I’ve never seen him actually say more than a word here or there to anyone. Of course he would decide to talk to Beau. I don’t like the way he looks at him. But he didn’t seem too excited about him. What did he say to me earlier? “Wonder what was with him last Monday.” Something like that. Didn’t sound like he cared. It couldn’t have been much of a conversation.…_

Se cheered herself with the idea that Beau had not been interested in his exchange with me. This annoyed me quite a bit, so I stopped listening to her.

I put in a CD of violent music, and then turned it up until it drowned out other voices. I had to concentrate on the music very hard to keep myself from drifting back to McKayla Newton’s thoughts to spy on the unsuspecting boy.

I cheated a few times as the hour drew to a close. Not spying, I tried to convince myself. I was just preparing. I wanted to know exactly when he would leave the gym, when he would be in the parking lot. I didn’t want him to take me by surprise.

As the students started to file out the gym doors, I got out of my car, not sure why I did it. The rain was light—I ignored it as it slowly saturated my hair.

Did I want him to see me here? Did I hope he would come to speak to me? What was I doing?

I didn’t move, though I tried to convince myself to get back in the car, knowing my behavior was reprehensible. I kept my arms folded across my chest and breathed very shallowly as I watched him walk slowly toward me, his mouth turning down at the corners. He didn’t look at me. A few times he glanced up at the clouds with a scowl, as if they had offended him.

I was disappointed when he reached his car before he had to pass me. Would he have spoken to me? Would I have spoken to him?

He got into a faded red Chevy truck, a rusted behemoth that was older than his father. I watched him start the truck—the old engine roared louder than any other vehicle in the lot—and then hold his hands out toward the heating vents. The cold was uncomfortable to him—he didn’t like it. I imagined what the cab of that truck would smell like, and then quickly drove out the thought.

He glanced around as he prepared to back out, and finally looked in my direction. He stared back at me for only half a second, and all I could read in his eyes was surprise before he tore them away and jerked the truck into reverse. And then squealed to a stop again, the back end of the truck missing a collision with Nicole Casey’s compact by mere inches.

He stared into her rearview mirror, his mouth hanging open, horrified at his near miss. When the other car had pulled past him, he checked all his blind spots twice and then inched out of the parking space so cautiously that it made me grin. It was as though he thought he was _dangerous_ in his decrepit truck.

The thought of Beau Swan being dangerous to anyone, no matter what he was driving, had me laughing while the boy drove past me, staring straight ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I created a new character? Sort of at least. We never learned Tanya's male counterpart in Life and Death, so I created Tanner. It's not a very Russian name, but there weren't a lot of alternatives. I mostly visualize Tanner as a very sensual vampire, who never limited his conquests to males or females. So you could say he's bisexual. Edward does acknowledge his beauty, but I don't think he really realizes yet that he does feel attracted to men. So turning Tanner away was still easy for him.
> 
> I've also realized that making this project will be slightly more difficult than changing names and pronouns. Beau says things in a very different way from Bella, and I was juggling both MS and L&D to include Beau's dialogue and Edward's. I should be able to find a midpoint for these, but I'm expecting a bigger challenge with the rest of the chapters.


	3. Risk

  1. **RISK**



TRULY, I WAS NOT THIRSTY, BUT I DECIDED TO HUNT AGAIN THAT NIGHT. A small ounce of prevention, inadequate though I knew it to be.

Carlisle came with me. We hadn’t been alone together since I’d returned from Denali. As we ran through the black forest, I heard him thinking about that hasty goodbye last week.

In his memory, I saw the way my features had been twisted in fierce despair. I felt again his surprise and sudden worry.

_“Edward?”_

_“I have to go, Carlisle. I have to go_ now _.”_

_“What’s happened?”_

_“Nothing. Yet. But it will if I stay.”_

He’d reached for my arm. I’d seen how it had hurt him when I’d cringed away from his hand.

_“I don’t understand.”_

_“Have you ever… has there ever been a time…?”_

I watched myself take a deep breath, saw the wild light in my eyes through the filter of his deep concern.

 _“Has any one person ever smelled better to you than the rest of them?_ Much _better?”_

_“Oh.”_

When I’d known that he understood, my face had fallen with shame. He’d reached out to touch me, ignoring it when I’d recoiled again, and left his hand on my shoulder.

_“Do what you must to resist, Son. I will miss you. Here, take my car. The tank is full.”_

He was wondering now if he’d done the right thing then, sending me away. Wondering if he had hurt me with his lack of trust.

“No,” I whispered as I ran. “That was what I needed. I might so easily have betrayed that trust if you’d told me to stay.”

“I’m sorry you’re suffering, Edward. But you should do what you can to keep the Swan child alive. Even if it means that you must leave us again.”

“I know, I know.”

“Why _did_ you come back? You know how happy I am to have you here, but if this is too difficult…”

“I didn’t like feeling a coward,” I admitted.

We’d slowed—we were barely jogging through the darkness now.

“Better that than to put him in danger. He’ll be gone in a year or two.”

“You’re right, I know that.” Contrarily, his words only made me more anxious to stay. The boy would be gone in a year or two.…

Carlisle stopped running and I stopped with him. He turned to examine my expression.

_But you’re not going to run, are you?_

I hung my head.

_Is it pride, Edward? There’s no shame in—_

“No, it isn’t pride that keeps me here. Not now.”

_Nowhere to go?_

I laughed shortly. “No. That wouldn’t stop me if I could make myself leave.”

“We’ll come with you, of course, if that’s what you need. You only have to ask. You’ve moved on without complaint for the rest of them. They won’t begrudge you this.”

I raised one eyebrow.

He laughed. “Yes, Rosalie might, but she owes you. Anyway, it’s much better for us to leave now, no damage done, than for us to leave later, after a life has been ended.” All humor was gone by the end.

I flinched at his words.

“Yes,” I agreed. My voice sounded hoarse.

_But you’re not leaving?_

I sighed. “I should.”

“What holds you here, Edward? I’m failing to see.…”

“I don’t know if I can explain.” Even to myself, it made no sense.

He measured my expression for a long moment.

_No, I do not see. But I will respect your privacy, if you prefer._

“Thank you. It’s generous of you, seeing as how I give privacy to no one.” With one exception. And I was doing what I could to deprive him of that, wasn’t I?

 _We all have our quirks._ He laughed again. _Shall we?_

He’d just caught the scent of a small herd of deer. It was hard to rally much enthusiasm for what was, even under the best of circumstances, a less than mouthwatering aroma. Right now, with the memory of the boy’s blood fresh in my mind, the smell actually turned my stomach.

I sighed. “Let’s,” I agreed, though I knew that forcing more blood down my throat would help so little.

We both shifted into a hunting crouch and let the unappealing scent pull us silently forward.

It was colder when we returned home. The melted snow had refrozen; it was as if a thin sheet of glass covered everything—each pine needle, each fern frond, each blade of grass was iced over.

While Carlisle went to dress for his early shift at the hospital, I stayed by the river, waiting for the sun to rise. I felt almost… _swollen_ from the amount of blood I’d consumed, but I knew the lack of actual thirst would mean little when I sat beside the boy again.

Cool and motionless as the stone I sat on, I stared at the dark water running beside the icy bank, stared right through it.

Carlisle was right. I should leave Forks. They could spread some story to explain my absence. Boarding school in Europe. Visiting distant relatives. Teenage runaway. The story didn’t matter. No one would question too intensely.

It was just a year or two, and then the boy would disappear. He would go on with his life—he would _have_ a life to go on with. He’d go to college somewhere, start a career, perhaps marry someone. I could picture that—I could see boy waiting at the altar, grinning at the person who was to be his life.

It was odd, the pain that image caused me. I couldn’t understand it. Was I begrudging of his future because it was something I could never have? That made no sense. Every one of the humans around me had that same potential ahead of them—a life—and I rarely stopped to envy them.

I should leave him to his future. Stop risking his life. That was the right thing to do. Carlisle always chose the right way. I should listen to him now. I would.

The sun rose behind the clouds, and the faint light glistened off all the frozen glass.

One more day, I decided. I would see him one more time. I could handle that. Perhaps I would mention my pending disappearance, set the story up.

This was going to be difficult. I could feel that in the heavy reluctance that was already making me think of excuses to stay—to extend the deadline to two days, three, four.… But I would do the right thing. I knew I could trust Carlisle’s advice. And I also knew that I was too conflicted to make the right decision alone.

Much too conflicted. How much of this reluctance came from my obsessive curiosity, and how much came from my unsatisfied appetite?

I went inside to change into fresh clothes for school.

Archie was waiting for me, sitting on the top step at the edge of the third floor.

 _You’re leaving again_ , he accused me.

I sighed and nodded.

_I can’t see where you’re going this time._

“I don’t know where I’m going yet,” I whispered.

_I want you to stay._

I shook my head.

_Maybe Jess and I could come with you?_

“They’ll need you all the more if I’m not here to watch out for them. And think of Esme. Would you take half her family away in one blow?”

_You’re going to make her so unhappy._

“I know. That’s why you have to stay.”

_That’s not the same as having you here, and you know it._

“Yes. But I have to do what’s right.”

_There are many right ways, and many wrong ways, though, aren’t there?_

For a brief moment, he was swept away into one of his strange visions; I watched along with him as the indistinct images flickered and whirled. I saw myself mixed in with strange shadows that I couldn’t make out—hazy, imprecise forms. And then, suddenly, my skin was glittering in the bright sunlight of a small open meadow. This was a place I knew. There was a figure in the meadow with me, but again, it was indistinct, not _there_ enough to recognize. The images shivered and disappeared as a million tiny choices rearranged the future again.

“I didn’t catch much of that,” I told him when the vision went dark.

 _Me either. Your future is shifting around so much I can’t keep up with any of it. I_ think _, though…_

He stopped, and he flipped through a vast collection of other recent visions for me. They were all the same—blurry and vague.

“I _think_ something is changing,” he said out loud. “Your life seems to be at a crossroads.”

I laughed grimly. “You do realize that you sound like a carnival fortune-teller, right?”

He stuck out his tongue at me.

“Today is all right, though, isn’t it?” I asked, my voice abruptly apprehensive.

“I don’t see you killing anyone today,” he assured me.

“Thanks, Archie.”

“Go get dressed. I won’t say anything—I’ll let you tell the others when you’re ready.”

He stood and darted back down the stairs, his shoulders hunched slightly. _Miss you. Really._

Yes, I would really miss him, too.

It was a quiet ride to school. Jessamine could feel that Archie was upset about something, but she knew that if he wanted to talk about it, he would have done so already. Emmett and Rosalie were oblivious, having another of their moments, gazing into each other’s eyes with wonder—it was rather disgusting to watch from the outside. We were all quite aware how desperately in love they were. Or maybe I was just being bitter because I was the only one alone. Some days it was harder than others to live with three sets of perfectly matched lovers. This was one of them.

Maybe they would all be happier without me hanging around, ill-tempered and belligerent as the old man I should be by now.

Of course, the first thing I did when we reached the school was to look for the boy. Just preparing myself again.

Right.

It was embarrassing how my world suddenly seemed to be empty of everything but him.

It was easy enough to understand, though, really. After eighty years of the same thing every day and every night, any change became a point of absorption.

He had not yet arrived, but I could hear the thunderous chugging of his truck’s engine in the distance. I leaned against the side of the car to wait. Archie stayed with me while the others went straight to class. They were already bored with my fixation—it was incomprehensible to them how any human could hold my interest for so long, no matter how appealing he smelled.

The boy drove slowly into view, his eyes intent on the road and his hands tight on the wheel. He seemed anxious about something. It took me a second to figure out what that something was, to realize that every human wore the same expression today. Ah, the road was slick with ice, and they were all trying to drive more carefully. I could see he was taking the added risk seriously.

That seemed in line with what little I had learned of his character. I added this to my small list: He was a serious person, a responsible person.

He parked not too far from me, but he hadn’t noticed me standing here yet, staring at him. I wondered what he would do when he saw me? Fluster and walk away? That was my first guess. But maybe he would stare back. Maybe he would come to talk to me.

I took a deep breath, filling my lungs hopefully, just in case.

He got out of the truck with care, testing the slick ground before he put his weight on it. He didn’t look up, and that frustrated me. Maybe I would go talk to him.…

No, that would be wrong.

Instead of turning toward the school, he made his way to the rear of his truck, clinging to the side of the truck bed in a droll way, not trusting his footing. It made me smile, and I felt Archie’s eyes on my face. I didn’t listen to whatever this made him think—I was having too much fun watching the boy check his snow chains. He actually looked in some danger of falling, the way his feet were sliding around. No one else was having trouble—had he parked in the worst of the ice?

He paused there, staring down with a strange expression on his face. It was… tender. As if something about the tire was making him… _emotional_?

Again, the curiosity ached like a thirst. It was as if I _had_ to know what he was thinking—as if nothing else mattered.

I would go talk to him. He looked like he could use a hand anyway, at least until he was off the slick pavement. Of course, I couldn’t offer him that, could I? I hesitated, torn. As averse as he seemed to be to snow, he would hardly welcome the touch of my cold white hand. I should have worn gloves—

“NO!” Archie gasped aloud.

Instantly, I scanned his thoughts, guessing at first that I had made a poor choice and he saw me doing something inexcusable. But it had nothing to do with me at all.

Tyler Crowley had chosen to take the turn into the parking lot at an injudicious speed. This choice would send him skidding across a patch of ice.

The vision came just half a second before the reality. Tyler’s van rounded the corner as I was still watching what had pulled the horrified gasp from Archie’s lips.

No, this vision had nothing to do with me, and yet it had _everything_ to do with me, because Tyler’s van—the tires right now hitting the ice at the worst possible angle—was going to spin across the lot and crush the boy who had become the uninvited focal point of my world.

Even without Archie’s foresight it would have been simple enough to read the trajectory of the vehicle, flying out of Tyler’s control.

The boy, standing in the exactly wrong place at the back of his truck, looked up, confused by the sound of the screeching tires. He looked straight into my horror-struck eyes, and then turned to watch his approaching death.

 _Not him!_ The words shouted in my head as if they belonged to someone else.

Still locked into Archie’s thoughts, I saw the vision suddenly shift, but I had no time to see what the outcome would be.

I launched myself across the lot, throwing myself between the skidding van and the frozen boy. I moved so fast that everything was a streaky blur except for the object of my focus. He didn’t see me—no human eyes could have followed my flight—still staring at the hulking shape that was about to grind his body into the metal frame of his truck.

I caught him around the waist, moving with too much urgency to be as gentle as he would need me to be. In the hundredth of a second between yanking his slight form out of the path of death and crashing to the ground with him in my arms, I was vividly aware of his fragile, breakable body.

When I heard his head thump against the ice, it felt as though I had turned to ice, too.

But I didn’t even have a full second to ascertain his condition. I heard the van behind us, grating and squealing as it twisted around the sturdy iron body of the boy’s truck. It was changing course, arcing, coming for him again—as though he were a magnet, pulling it toward us.

I had already done too much. As I’d nearly flown through the air to push him out of the way, I’d been fully aware of the mistake I was making. Knowing that it was a mistake did not stop me, but I was not oblivious to the risk I was taking—not just for myself, but for my entire family.

Exposure.

And _this_ certainly wouldn’t help, but there was no way I was going to allow the van to succeed in its second attempt to take his life.

I dropped him and threw my hands out, catching the van before it could touch the boy. The force of it hurled me back into the car parked beside his truck, and I could feel its frame buckle behind my shoulders. The van shuddered and shivered against the unyielding obstacle of my arms, and then swayed, balancing unstably on its two far tires.

If I moved my hands, the back tire of the van was going to fall onto his legs.

Oh, for the _love_ of _all_ that was _holy_ , would the catastrophes never end? Was there anything else that could go wrong? I could hardly sit here, holding the van up, and wait for rescue. Nor could I throw the van away—there was the driver to consider, his thoughts incoherent with panic.

With an internal groan, I shoved the van so that it rocked away from us for an instant. As it fell back toward me, I caught it under the frame with my right hand while I wrapped my left arm around the boy’s waist again and dragged him out from under the threatening tire, pulling him tight against my side. His body moved limply as I swung him around so that his legs would be in the clear—was he conscious? How much damage had I done to him in my impromptu rescue attempt?

I let the van drop, now that it could not hurt him. It crashed to the pavement, all the windows shattering in unison.

I knew that I was in the middle of a crisis. How much had he seen? Had any other witnesses watched me materialize at his side and then juggle the van while I tried to keep him out from under it? These questions _should_ be my biggest concern.

But I was too anxious to really care about the threat of exposure as much as I should. Too panic-stricken that I might have injured him in my effort to save his life. Too frightened to have him this close to me, knowing what I would smell if I allowed myself to inhale. Too aware of the heat of his soft body, pressed against mine—even through the double obstacle of our jackets, I could feel that heat.

The first fear was the greatest fear. As the screaming of the witnesses erupted around us, I leaned down to examine his face, to see if he was conscious—hoping fiercely that he was not bleeding anywhere.

His eyes were open, staring in shock.

“Beau?” I asked urgently. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” He said the words automatically in a dazed voice.

Relief, so exquisite it was nearly pain, washed through me at the sound of his voice. I sucked in a breath through my teeth and for once did not mind the agony of the accompanying burn in my throat. In a strange way, I almost welcomed it.

He struggled to sit up, but I was not ready to release him. It felt somehow… safer? Better, at least, having him tucked into my side.

“Be careful,” I warned him. “I think you hit your head pretty hard.”

There had been no smell of fresh blood—a great mercy, that—but this did not rule out internal damage. I was abruptly anxious to get him to Carlisle and a full complement of radiology equipment.

“Ow,” he said, his tone comically shocked as he realized I was right about his head.

“That’s what I thought.” Relief made it funny to me, made me almost _giddy_.

“How in the…?” His voice trailed off, and his eyelids fluttered. “How did you get over here so fast?”

The relief turned sour, the humor vanished. He _had_ noticed too much.

Now that it appeared the boy was in decent shape, the anxiety for my family became severe.

“I was standing right next to you, Beau.” I knew from experience that if I was very confident as I lied, it made any questioner less sure of the truth.

He struggled to move again, and this time I allowed it. I needed to breathe so that I could play my role correctly. I needed space from his warm-blooded heat so that it would not combine with his scent to overwhelm me. I slid away from him, as far as was possible in the small space between the wrecked vehicles.

He stared up at me, and I stared back. To look away first was a mistake only an incompetent liar would make, and I was not an incompetent liar. My expression was smooth, benign. It seemed to confuse him. That was good.

The accident scene was surrounded now. Mostly students, children, peering and pushing through the cracks to see if any mangled bodies were visible. There was a babble of shouting and a gush of shocked thought. I scanned the thoughts once to make sure there were no suspicions yet, and then tuned them out and concentrated only on the boy.

He was distracted by the bedlam. He glanced around, his expression still stunned, and tried to get to his feet.

I put my hand lightly on his shoulder to hold him down.

“Just stay put for now.” He _seemed_ all right, but should he really be moving his neck? Again, I wished for Carlisle. My years of theoretical medical study were no match for his centuries of hands-on medical practice.

“But it’s cold,” he objected.

He had almost been crushed to death two distinct times, and it was the cold that worried him. A chuckle slid through my teeth before I could remember that the situation was not funny.

Beau blinked, and then his eyes focused on my face. “You were over there.”

That sobered me again.

He glanced toward the south, though there was nothing to see now but the crumpled side of the van. “You were by your car.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“I saw you,” he insisted. His voice was childlike in his stubbornness. His chin jutted out.

“Beau, I was standing with you, and I pulled you out of the way.”

I stared deeply into his eyes, trying to will him into accepting my version—the only rational version on the table.

His jaw set. “No.”

I tried to stay calm, to not panic. If only I could keep him quiet for a few moments to give me a chance to destroy the evidence… and undermine his story by disclosing his head injury.

Shouldn’t it be easy to keep this silent, secretive boy quiet? If only he would follow my lead, just for a few moments…

“Please, Beau,” I said, and my voice was too intense, because I suddenly _wanted_ his trust. Wanted it badly, and not just in regard to this accident. A stupid desire. What sense would it make for him to trust _me_?

“Why?” he asked, still defensive.

“Trust me,” I pleaded.

“Will you promise to explain everything to me later?”

It made me angry to have to lie to him again, when I so wished that I could somehow deserve his confidence. When I answered him, it was a retort.

“Fine.”

“Fine,” he echoed in the same tone.

While the rescue attempt began around us—adults arriving, authorities called, sirens in the distance—I tried to ignore the boy and get my priorities in the right order. I searched through every mind in the lot, the witnesses and the latecomers both, but I could find nothing dangerous. Many were surprised to see me here beside Beau, but all assumed—as there was no other possible conclusion—that they had just not noticed me standing by the boy before the accident.

He was the only one who didn’t accept the easy explanation, but he would be considered the least reliable witness. He had been frightened, traumatized, not to mention sustaining a blow to his head. Possibly in shock. It would be acceptable for his story to be confused, wouldn’t it? No one would give it much credence above so many other spectators’.

I winced when I caught the thoughts of Rosalie, Jessamine, and Emmett, just arriving on the scene. There would be hell to pay for this tonight.

I wanted to iron out the indentation my shoulders had made in the tan car, but the boy was too close. I’d have to wait until he was distracted.

It was frustrating to wait—so many eyes on me—as the humans struggled with the van, trying to pull it away from us. I might have helped them, just to speed the process, but I was already in enough trouble and the boy had sharp eyes. Finally, they were able to shift it far enough away for the EMTs to get to us with their stretchers.

A familiar grizzled face appraised me.

“Hey, Edward,” Brett Warner said. He was also a registered nurse, and I knew him well from the hospital. It was a stroke of luck—the only luck today—that he was the first through to us. In his thoughts, he was noting that I looked alert and calm. “You okay, kid?”

“Perfect, Brett. Nothing touched me. But I’m afraid Beau here might have a concussion. He really hit his head when I yanked him out of the way.”

Brett turned his attention to the boy, who shot me a fierce look of betrayal. Oh, that was right. He was the quiet martyr—he’d prefer to suffer in silence.

He did not contradict my story immediately, though, and this made me feel easier.

The next EMT tried to insist that I allow myself to be treated, but it wasn’t too difficult to dissuade him. I promised I would have my father examine me, and he let it go. With most humans, speaking with cool assurance was all that was needed. Most humans, just not the boy, of course. Did he fit into _any_ of the normal patterns?

As they put a neck brace on him—and his face flushed scarlet with embarrassment—I used the moment of distraction to quietly rearrange the shape of the dent in the tan car with the back of my foot. Only my siblings noticed what I was doing, and I heard Emmett’s mental promise to catch anything I missed.

Grateful for his help—and more grateful that Emmett, at least, had already forgiven my dangerous choice—I was more relaxed as I climbed into the front seat of the ambulance next to Brett.

The chief of police arrived before they had gotten Beau into the back of the ambulance.

Though Beau’s father’s thoughts were past words, the panic and concern emanating from the man’s mind drowned out just about every other thought in the vicinity. Wordless anxiety and guilt, a great swell of them, washed out of him as he saw his only son on the gurney.

When Archie had warned me that killing Charlie Swan’s son would kill him, too, he had not been exaggerating.

My head bowed with that guilt as I listened to his panicked voice.

“Beau!” he shouted.

“I’m completely fine, Char—Dad.” He sighed. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

His assurance barely soothed his dread. He turned at once to the closest EMT and demanded more information.

It wasn’t until I heard him speaking, forming perfectly coherent sentences despite his panic, that I realized that his anxiety and concern were _not_ wordless. I just… could not hear the exact words.

Hmm. Charlie Swan was not as silent as his son, but I could see where he got it from. Interesting.

I’d never spent much time around the town’s police chief. I’d always taken him for a man of slow thought—now I realized that _I_ was the one who was slow. His thoughts were partially concealed, not absent. I could only make out the tenor, the tone of them.

I wanted to listen harder, to see if I could find in this new, lesser puzzle the key to the boy’s secrets. But Beau had been loaded into the back by then, and the ambulance was on its way.

It was hard to tear myself away from this possible solution to the mystery that had come to obsess me. But I had to think now—to look at what had been done today from every angle. I had to listen, to make sure that I had not put us all in so much danger that we would have to leave immediately. I had to concentrate.

There was nothing in the thoughts of the EMTs to worry me. As far as they could tell, there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with the boy. And Beau was sticking to the story I’d provided, for now.

The first priority, when we reached the hospital, was to see Carlisle. I hurried through the automatic doors, but I was unable to totally forgo watching after Beau. I figuratively kept one eye on him through the paramedics’ thoughts.

It was easy to find my father’s familiar mind. He was in his small office, all alone—the second stroke of luck in this luckless day.

“Carlisle.”

He’d heard my approach and was alarmed as soon as he saw my face. He jumped to his feet and leaned forward across the neatly organized walnut desk.

_Edward—you didn’t—?_

“No, no, it’s not that.”

He took a deep breath. _Of course not. I’m sorry I entertained the thought. Your eyes, of course, I should have known._ He noted my still-golden eyes with relief.

“He’s hurt, though, Carlisle, probably not seriously, but—”

“What happened?”

“A ridiculous car accident. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I couldn’t just stand there—let it crush him.…”

_Start over, I don’t understand. How were you involved?_

“A van skidded across the ice,” I whispered. I stared at the wall behind him while I spoke. Instead of a throng of framed diplomas, he had one simple oil painting—a favorite of his, an undiscovered Hassam. “He was in the way. Archie saw it coming, but there wasn’t time to do anything but really _run_ across the lot and shove him out of the way. No one noticed… except for him. I had to stop the van, too, but again, nobody saw that… besides him. I’m… I’m sorry, Carlisle. I didn’t mean to put us in danger.”

He circled the desk and embraced me for a short moment before stepping back.

_You did the right thing. And it couldn’t have been easy for you. I’m proud of you, Edward._

I could look him in the eye then. “He knows there’s something… wrong with me.”

“That doesn’t matter. If we have to leave, we leave. What has he said?”

I shook my head, a little frustrated. “Nothing yet.”

_Yet?_

“He agreed to my version of events—but he’s expecting an explanation.”

He frowned, pondering this.

“He hit his head—well, I did that,” I continued quickly. “I knocked him to the ground fairly hard. He seems fine, but… I don’t think it will take much to discredit his account.”

I felt like a cad just saying the words.

Carlisle heard the distaste in my voice. _Perhaps that won’t be necessary. Let’s see what happens, shall we? It sounds like I have a patient to check on._

“Please,” I said. “I’m so afraid that I hurt him.”

Carlisle’s expression brightened. He smoothed his fair hair—just a few shades lighter than his golden eyes—and laughed.

 _It’s been an interesting day for you, hasn’t it?_ In his mind, I could see the irony, and it was humorous, at least to him. Quite the reversal of roles. Somewhere during that short, thoughtless second when I’d sprinted across the icy lot, I had transformed from killer to protector.

I laughed with him, remembering how sure I’d been that Beau would never need protecting from anything more than from me. There was an edge to my laugh because, van not withstanding, that was still entirely true.

I waited alone in Carlisle’s office—one of the longest hours I had ever lived—listening to the hospital full of thoughts.

Tyler Crowley, the van’s driver, looked to be hurt worse than Beau, and the attention shifted to him while he waited his turn to be x-rayed. Carlisle kept in the background, trusting the PA’s diagnosis that the boy was only slightly injured. This made me anxious, but I knew he was right. One glance at his face and he would be immediately reminded of me, of the fact that there was something not right about my family, and that might set him talking.

He certainly had a willing enough partner to converse with. Tyler, consumed with guilt over the fact that he had almost killed him, couldn’t seem to shut up about it. I could see his expression through his eyes, and it was clear that he wished he would stop. How did he not see that?

There was a tense moment for me when Tyler asked him how he’d gotten out of the way.

I waited, frozen, as he hesitated.

“ _Um…_ ,” he heard him say. Then he paused for so long that Tyler wondered if his question had confused him. Finally, he went on. _“Edward pulled me out of the way.”_

I exhaled. And then my breathing accelerated. I’d never heard him speak my name before. I liked the way it sounded—even just hearing it through Tyler’s thoughts. I wanted to hear it for myself.…

“ _Edward Cullen_ ,” he said, when Tyler didn’t realize whom he meant. I found myself at the door, my hand on the knob. The desire to see him was growing stronger. I had to remind myself of the need for caution.

_“He was standing next to me.”_

_“Cullen?” Huh. That’s weird. “I didn’t see him.” I could have sworn… “Wow, it was all so fast, I guess. Is he okay?”_

_“I think so. He’s here somewhere, but they didn’t make him use a stretcher.”_

I saw the thoughtful look on his face, the suspicious tightening of his eyes, but these little changes in his expression were lost on Tyler.

 _He’s pretty nice to look at,_ he was thinking, almost in surprise. _Even all messed up. I wonder… Maybe he’s into guys? McKayle is really into him, but he doesn’t seem interested. Maybe I should take the risk and ask him out. Make up for today._

I was out in the hall then, halfway to the emergency room, without thinking for one second about what I was doing. Luckily, the nurse entered the room before I could—it was Beau’s turn for X-rays. I leaned against the wall in a dark nook just around the corner and tried to get a grip on myself while he was wheeled away.

It shouldn’t matter that Tyler thought he was good-looking. Anyone would notice that. There was no reason for me to feel… how _did_ I feel? Annoyed? Or was _angry_ closer to the truth? That made no sense at all. I had always known Tyler was gay. He was proud of it, and he always made a point in making sure that everyone in this small town knew it, much to the distaste of his parents and a lot of the other students.

I stayed where I was for as long as I could, but impatience got the best of me and I took a roundabout way to the radiology room. He’d already been moved back to the ER, but I was able to peek at his X-rays while the nurse’s attention was elsewhere.

I felt calmer when I had. His head was fine. I hadn’t hurt him, not really.

Carlisle caught me there.

 _You look better_ , he commented.

I just looked straight ahead. We weren’t alone, the halls full of orderlies and visitors.

 _Ah, yes._ He stuck his X-rays to the lightboard, but I didn’t need a second look. _I see. He’s absolutely fine. Well done, Edward._

The sound of my father’s approval created a mixed reaction in me. I would have been pleased, except that I knew he would not approve of what I was going to do now. At least, he would not approve if he knew my real motivations.

“I think I’m going to go talk to him—before he sees you,” I murmured under my breath. “Act natural, like nothing happened. Smooth it over.” All acceptable reasons.

Carlisle nodded absently, still looking over the X-rays. “Good idea. Hmm.”

I looked to see what had his interest.

 _Look at all the healed contusions! How many times did his mother drop him?_ Carlisle laughed to himself at his joke.

“I’m beginning to think the boy just has really bad luck. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

_Forks is certainly the wrong place for him, with you here._

I flinched.

_Go ahead. Smooth things over. I’ll join you momentarily._

I walked away quickly, feeling guilty. Perhaps I was too good a liar if I could fool Carlisle.

When I got to the ER, Tyler was mumbling under his breath, still apologizing. The boy was trying to escape his remorse by pretending to sleep. His eyes were closed, but his breathing was not even, and now and then his fingers would twitch impatiently.

I stared at his face for a long moment. This was the last time I would see him. The fact triggered an acute aching in my chest. Was it because I hated to leave any puzzle unsolved? That did not seem enough of an explanation.

Finally, I took a deep breath and moved into view.

When Tyler saw me, he started to speak, but I put one finger to my lips.

“Is he sleeping?” I murmured.

Beau’s eyes snapped open and focused on my face. They widened momentarily, and then narrowed in anger or suspicion. I remembered that I had a role to play, so I smiled at him as if nothing unusual had happened this morning—besides a blow to his head and a bit of imagination run wild.

“Hey, Edward,” Tyler said. “I’m really sorry—”

I raised one hand to halt his apology. “No blood, no foul,” I said wryly. Without thinking, I smiled too widely at my private joke.

Tyler shivered and looked away.

It was amazingly easy to ignore Tyler, lying no more than four feet from me, his deeper wounds still oozing blood. I’d never understood how Carlisle was able to do that—ignore the blood of his patients in order to treat them. Wouldn’t the constant temptation be so distracting, so dangerous? But now… I could see how, if you were focusing on something else _hard_ enough, the temptation would be nothing at all.

Even fresh and exposed, Tyler’s blood had nothing on Beau’s.

I kept my distance from him, seating myself on the foot of Tyler’s mattress.

“So, what’s the verdict?” I asked him.

His lower lip pushed out a little. “There’s nothing wrong with me at all, but they won’t let me go. How come you aren’t strapped to a gurney like the rest of us?”

His impatience made me smile again.

I could hear Carlisle in the hall now.

“It’s all about who you know,” I said lightly. “But don’t worry, I came to spring you.”

I watched his reaction carefully as my father entered the room. His eyes went round and his mouth actually fell open in surprise. I groaned internally. Yes, he’d certainly noticed the resemblance.

“So, Mr. Swan, how are you feeling?” Carlisle asked. He had a wonderfully soothing bedside manner that put most patients at ease within moments. I couldn’t tell how it affected Beau.

“I’m fine,” he said quietly.

Carlisle clipped his X-rays to the lightboard by the bed. “Your X-rays look good. Does your head hurt? Edward said you hit it pretty hard.”

He sighed and said “It’s fine” again, but this time impatience leaked into his voice. He glowered once in my direction.

Carlisle stepped closer to him and ran his fingers gently over his scalp until he found the bump under his hair.

I was caught off guard by the wave of emotion that crashed upon me.

I had seen Carlisle work with humans a thousand times. Years ago, I had even assisted him informally—though only in situations where blood was not involved. So it wasn’t a new thing to me, to watch him interact with the boy as if he were as human as he was. I’d envied his control many times, but that was not the same as this emotion. I envied him more than his control. I ached for the difference between Carlisle and me—that he could touch him so gently, without fear, knowing he would never harm him.

He winced, and I twitched in my seat. I had to concentrate for a moment to regain my relaxed posture.

“Tender?” Carlisle asked.

His chin jerked up a fraction. “Not really,” he said.

Another small piece of his character fell into place: He was brave. He didn’t like to show weakness.

Possibly the most vulnerable creature I’d ever seen, and he didn’t want to seem weak. A chuckle slid through my lips.

He shot another glare at me.

“Well,” Carlisle said, “your father is in the waiting room—you can go home with him now. But come back if you feel dizzy or have trouble with your eyesight at all.”

His father was here? I swept through the thoughts in the crowded waiting room, but I couldn’t pick his subtle mental voice out of the group before he was speaking again, his face anxious.

“Can’t I go back to school?”

“Maybe you should take it easy today,” Carlisle suggested.

His eyes flickered back to me. “Does _he_ get to go to school?”

Act normal, smooth things over… ignore the way it feels when he looks me in the eye.…

“Someone has to spread the good news that we survived,” I said.

“Actually,” Carlisle corrected, “most of the school seems to be in the waiting room.”

I anticipated his reaction this time—his aversion to attention. He didn’t disappoint.

“Oh no,” he moaned, and put his hands over his face.

I liked that I’d finally guessed right. That I was beginning to understand him.

“Do you want to stay?” Carlisle asked.

“No, no!” he said quickly, swinging his legs over the side of the mattress and sliding down until his feet were on the floor. He stumbled forward, off-balance, into Carlisle’s arms. He caught and steadied him.

Again, the envy flooded through me.

“I’m fine,” he said before he could comment, faint pink in his cheeks.

Of course, that wouldn’t bother Carlisle. He made sure he was balanced, and then dropped his hands.

“Take some Tylenol for the pain,” he instructed.

“It doesn’t hurt that bad.”

Carlisle smiled as he signed his chart. “It sounds like you were extremely lucky.”

He turned his face slightly, to stare at me with hard eyes. “Lucky Edward happened to be standing next to me.”

“Oh, well, yes,” Carlisle agreed quickly, hearing the same thing in his voice that I heard. He hadn’t written his suspicions off as imagination. Not yet.

 _All yours_ , Carlisle thought. _Handle it as you think best._

“Thanks so much,” I whispered, quick and quiet. Neither human heard me. Carlisle’s lips turned up a tiny bit at my sarcasm as he turned to Tyler. “I’m afraid that _you’ll_ have to stay with us just a little bit longer,” he said as he began examining the superficial lacerations left by the shattered windshield.

Well, I’d made the mess, so it was only fair that I had to deal with it.

Beau walked deliberately toward me, not stopping until he was uncomfortably close. I remembered how I had hoped, before all the chaos, that he would approach me. This was like a mockery of that wish.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he hissed at me.

His warm breath swept across my face and I had to stagger back a step. His appeal had not abated one bit. Every time he was near me, it triggered all my worst, most urgent instincts. Venom flowed in my mouth, and my body yearned to strike—to wrench him into my arms and crush his throat to my teeth.

My mind was stronger than my body, but only just.

“Your father is waiting for you,” I reminded him, my jaw clenched tight.

He glanced toward Carlisle and Tyler. Tyler was paying us no attention at all, but Carlisle was monitoring my every breath.

_Carefully, Edward._

“I’d like to speak to you alone, if you don’t mind,” he insisted in a low voice.

I wanted to tell him that I did mind very much, but I knew I would have to do this eventually. I might as well get on with it.

I was full of so many conflicting emotions as I stalked out of the room, listening to his stumbling footsteps behind me, trying to keep up.

I had a show to put on now. I knew the role I would play—I had the character down: I would be the villain. I would lie and ridicule and be cruel.

It went against all my better impulses—the human impulses that I’d clung to through so many years. I’d never wanted to deserve trust more than in this moment, when I had to destroy all possibility of it.

It made it worse to know that this would be the last memory he would have of me. This was my farewell scene.

I turned on him.

“What do you want?” I asked coldly.

He cringed back slightly from my hostility. His eyes turned bewildered, his face shifting into the very expression that had haunted me.

“You owe me an explanation,” he said in a small voice. What little color he had drained from his ivory skin.

It was very hard to keep my voice harsh. “I saved your life—I don’t owe you anything.”

He flinched—it stung like acid to watch my words hurt him.

“You promised,” he whispered.

“Beau, you hit your head, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His chin came up then. “There’s nothing wrong with my head.”

He was angry now, and that made it easier for me. I met his glare, arranging my face so it was colder, harder.

“What do you want from me, Beau?”

“I want to know the truth. I want to know why I’m lying for you.”

What he wanted was only fair—it frustrated me to have to deny him.

“What do you _think_ happened?” I nearly growled.

His words poured out in a torrent. “All I know is that you weren’t anywhere near me—Tyler didn’t see you, either, so don’t tell me I hit my head too hard. That van was going to crush us both—and it didn’t, and your hands left dents in the side of it—and you left a dent in the other car, and you’re not hurt at all—and the van should have smashed my legs, but you were holding it up.…” Suddenly, he clenched his teeth together and his eyes were glistening with unshed tears.

I stared at him, my expression thoroughly derisive, though what I really felt was awe; he had seen everything.

“You think I lifted a van off you?” I asked, elevating the level of sarcasm in my tone.

He answered with one stiff nod.

My voice grew more mocking. “Nobody will believe that, you know.”

He made an effort to control his emotions—his anger, it looked like. When he answered me, he spoke each word with slow deliberation. “I’m not going to tell anybody.”

He meant it—I could see that in his eyes. Even furious and betrayed, he would keep my secret.

_Why?_

The shock of it ruined my carefully designed expression for half a second, and then I pulled myself together.

“Then why does it matter?” I asked, working to keep my voice severe.

“It matters to me,” he said intensely. “I don’t like to lie—so there’d better be a good reason why I’m doing it.”

He was asking me to trust him. Just as I wanted him to trust me. But this was a line I could not cross.

My voice stayed callous. “Can’t you just thank me and get it over with?”

“Thank you,” he said, and then he fumed in silence, waiting.

“You’re not going to let it go, are you?”

“No.”

“In that case…” I couldn’t tell him the truth if I wanted to… and I _didn’t_ want to. I’d rather he made up his own story than know what I was, because nothing could be worse than the truth—I was an undead nightmare, straight from the pages of a horror novel. “I hope you enjoy disappointment.”

We scowled at each other.

He flushed and ground his teeth again. “Why did you even bother?”

His question wasn’t one that I was expecting or prepared to answer. I lost my hold on the role I was playing. I felt the mask slip from my face, and I told him—this one time—the truth.

“I don’t know.”

I memorized his face one last time—it was still set in lines of anger, the blood not yet faded from his cheeks—and then I turned and walked away from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally gonna keep the whole setup with female characters going after Beau, but decided I could include one gay character in Tyler. This made sense to me, in that maybe this is what triggers Edward to stop seeing Beau as just another guy, and truly start feeling something for him. Other than that, no major changes to the original chapter.


End file.
